Railways launched 153 new train services in 2019-20: Goyal

New Delhi, Feb 5 : The Railways introduced 153 services in 2019-20 as compared to 266 services in 2018-19, which included modern semi-high speed trains like Vande Bharat, Tejas Express and UDAY (Utkrisht Double-Decker Air-conditioned Yatri) Express trains, Parliament was informed on Friday.
In a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said: “To facilitate passengers, Indian Railways, during the period 2018-19 and 2019-20, railways introduced new 153 and 266 services respectively.” He said that introducing new services is a continual endeavour of the national transporter to upgrade train services and to provide improved facilities to the passengers.
“Indian Railways have introduced premium services like Vande Bharat Express, Humsafar, Tejas, Antyodaya, UDAY, to provide better travelling experience to the passengers,” he said, adding that state-of-art Vande Bharat Express services have been introduced on New Delhi-Varanasi and New Delhi-Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra sectors.
“These trains have ultra modern features like quick acceleration, on board infotainment and Global Positioning System (GPS) based passenger information system, automatic sliding doors, retractable footsteps and zero discharge vacuum bio toilets etc,” he said.
Goyal said that a total of four pairs of Tejas Express services have been introduced.