The railways is planning to run the double decker service from Visakhapatnam to either Vijayawada or beyond it to Tirupati and working on identifying convenient timings for it after a successful trial run.
Visakhapatnam MP Kambhampati Haribabu and other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders had been following up the issue with the Railway Minister and East Coast Railway (ECoR) headquarters for the past several months. The train should be introduced without any further delay, they said.
There are three important express trains – Janmabhoomi, Simhadri and AP AC Express – running from Visakhapatnam to Vijayawada and beyond between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. everyday.
It’s a different matter that the demand for giving a convenient schedule for the prestigious AP AC Express, right since its launch in August 2015, has not been met to this day. Mr. Haribabu as also MLAs and party leaders from both BJP and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had demanded increasing the speed of the train and reducing the halts in other States.
They had decried the ‘inappropriate timings’ allocated to this train as tourists and business travellers would have to spend an extra night in Delhi spending a huge amount. The timings should be fixed so that it reaches Delhi in the early hours around 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu had also agreed to consider the demand but nothing happened so far.
Re-scheduling needed
The plan to run the DD Express from Visakhapatnam to Vijayawada or Tirupathi calls for immediate re-scheduling of the AP AC Express to ensure good patronage for both the trains. “The AP AC Express should leave Vizag in the evenings so as to reach Delhi in the early hours and the DD Express could start from Vizag around 7 a.m.,” opines BJP city president M. Nagendra.
The LHB rake of the DD Express is designed to run at high speed. Allocating inconvenient timings or delaying it at the outer signal due to jurisdictional issues between the zonal railways could kill a good train.
The DD Express, operated between Guntur – Kacheguda and Kacheguda – Tirupathi, made losses for nearly two years due to wrong policies, the BJP leader said.
