In an era of airfare war, Railways does not see any threat from domestic airlines but would chart out a slew of measures to improve passenger services and rail safety.
"I don't see a very serious threat in the immediate future," Railway board chairman J P Batra said on Tuesday contending that all the airlines put together don't carry the number of passengers in a year that the Railways ferry in a single day.
Asked whether the slashing of fares by the stiffly competing domestic airlines would hit Railways since, in certain cases, the first class fares were higher than airfares, he shot back "there is a large waiting list on all AC classes in Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains".
"At the same time, we are not complacent. We are paying full attention on improving our services to the passengers," he said.
In a wide-ranging interview with PTI, Batra outlined a number of innovative steps that will be initiated this year in view of projections of substantial increase in both passenger and freight segments.
He said a pilot project would soon be launched in Delhi for upgradation of passenger reservation. Under this scheme, wait-listed passengers would be accommodated to higher classes subject to availability. This would be subsequently extended throughout the country.
The chairman said this would be done on a "random" basis to ensure that Railway functionaries and others were not able to "influence" the upgradation scheme.