1) making this train daily was a great move. however they have done silly things like having 1.5 ac first class coaches and just 1 3A and only 8 SL coaches. either way it is useful, no doubt
2) another useful train no doubt
3) not sure how good this train is. a lot of empty seats in SL and 3A. i feel it reaches SC far too late. no. of empty seats is a good metric to see how well a train is doing. in a country like india where so many...
more... trains run packed and people are desperate to get a ticket, it is really sad to see empty seats in a lot of trains only because of bad timing. and bad timing is usually because tracks are at full capacity for the useful times.
4) ypr-kcg train is also empty. i dont know how the ypr->kcg timings help anyone. yes, the return might be helping the mys folks.
5) bangalore-hubli-mumbai has no passengers? have you seen the number of buses that are there? the only reason demand is less in trains is because they are so badly connected which is exactly my point from the beginning. bangalore and other important cities in karnataka are badly connected to important cities nearby. blr-mumbai should have ideally trains running like mumbai-delhi. same goes for blr-hyd. its ridiculous that the current trains take 12-14 hours to cover 700km. especially when the same railways can run trains in delhi and chennai at 80-90kmph.
6) when i meant HSRA, i meant that route. majority of it lies within karnataka. only last few KMs in TN
7) in general my argument put simply is this: i am not unhappy with what he has done. but we are satisfied too easily with just addition of a few trains. it would be a lot better for karnataka if mr.kharge had just speeded up track doubling and added a few coaches to the already existing trains. if you go to delhi, kolkata or mumbai, you can go to nearby important cities so fast and the trains are usually on time. its sad that in south india, usually, important cities are all connected by slow trains (except sbc,mas) at inconvenient times.
my personal view is that adding new trains is a very easy way to keep the population happy. i am not saying it is wrong, but in the long run, for being more efficient and safe, a major push to bring karnataka's infrastructure on par with kolkata or delhi would have been more useful.
i really dream of the day when trains between bangalore and mysore ply at 90-100kmph or a shatabdi between sbc and sc. sadly, examples of this already exist in our country and for some reason we cant have it, inspite of the demand.