Three years on, Indian Railways' passenger traffic remains below pre-pandemic numbers

India's rail network has seen 58,580 lakh passengers in 2022-23, but has fallen short of the traffic measured during 2019-20, before the COVID-19 pandemic, by 24%

Data for the current financial year, till February, saw booking down by over 18, 150 lakh compared to the same period, pre-pandemic.

According to the Railways' monthly evaluation report for the past five years, the national transporter saw 77,250 lakh passengers in 2018-19 and 76, 740 lakh in 2019-20, numbers that haven't been achieved since.


During 2020-21, the year of the lockdowns, the Railways saw only 9,850 lakh passengers. The number increased the following year, clocking in at 30,630 lakh, well below pre-pandemic numbers.

The Indian Railways' traffic is broken down into two broad categories - suburban and non-suburban - where distances less than 150km are demarcated as suburban, while regions that operate in larger areas are non-suburban.

Suburban networks are operational in Mumbai (Central and Western), Kolkata (Eastern, South Eastern and Metro), Chennai (Southern) and Secunderabad (South Central).

Compared to 2019-20, the data for this year shows a 20% drop in suburban transport and a 29% drop in non-suburban transport.

The biggest loser in these statistics is the Western Zone, seeing 2,880 lakh fewer passengers. While the Central zone's passenger traffic is down by 2,710 lakh and the Eastern zone saw a decline of 1,470 lakh.

In non-suburban transport, the northern zone has seen the highest absolute dip in passenger traffic as 1,760 lakh fewer passengers travelled by train in 2022-23 as compared to 2019-20.

It is not clear how much of the decline in bookings in the northern zone might be due to a fall in railway traffic between Delhi and its satellites. For the Western, Southern, South Central, Central, North Eastern and South East Central zone, the dip in passenger traffic was between 500 and 1000 lakh for 2022-23 as compared to 2019-20.