Howrah-Puri Vande Bharat tickets sold out for next wk
Times of India | 20 May 2023
KOLKATA: Bengal’s second Vande Bharat Express will start its maiden commercial service from Howrah to Puri on Saturday, and tickets have been sold out for the next eight days.
The Railways commenced the booking process for the Howrah-Puri Vande Bharat Express, codenamed Train 18, on Wednesday. On Thursday afternoon, PM Narendra Modi flagged off the semi-high speed train from Puri. Regular services will begin at 6.10am on Saturday.
By Thursday evening, tickets to all the 1,128 seats of the Howrah-Puri Vande Bharat Express had been booked till next Sunday. The train doesn’t ply on Thursdays.
“The waiting list is getting longer, and the maiden commercial run hasn’t even started. This speaks volumes about the popularity of this train on one of the most sought-after routes,” Aditya Kumar Chaudhary, CPRO, South-Eastern Railway, told TOI on Friday.
Chaudhary said, “The train, which will take a little more than six hours to cover the 500km from Howrah to Puri compared to the eight hours taken by Shatabdi Express, is already a huge success story. In terms of fare, Vande Bharat has an edge, too.” The AC chair car of Vande Bharat costs Rs 1,265 while Shatabdi Express’ AC chair car costs Rs 1,380. But the executive class price of Vande Bharat is Rs 2,420, higher than Shatabdi’s Rs 2,130.
Tickets to both chair car and executive class tickets for Howrah-Puri Vande Bharat are flying off fast. Till 5pm on Friday, Saturday’s waiting list was 123 for chair cars and 29 for executive class. For Sunday, there were 67 chair car wait-list tickets and 18 executive class wait-list tickets. For Monday, the wait-list was 50 and 5 respectively. At 8pm on Thursday, the wait list for next Friday’s executive class was 4.