The Nigerian Railways Corporation (NRC) has said the Abuja to Kaduna train service has a record of about 900,000 passengers in two years.
While speaking on Thursday at the two years anniversary celebration of the Idu train station, the Manager, Abuja-Kaduna Train Service, Mr. Pascal Nnorli also said the service has provided 600 direct jobs since inception.
“As at two day (yesterday) when we checked, we saw that we have carried approximately 900,000 passengers in two years,” he said.
President Muhammadu Buhari had on the 26 of July, 2016, flagged off the commencement of the commercial operations of the service.
Nnorli said the service has credible well in the last two years.
“We have done well, based on the available infrastructure. Before 2016, we didn’t have any operational standard gauge railway in West Africa, this was the pioneer standard gauge operation in West Africa and here we are today carrying an average of 2000 passengers every day,” he said.
He added that very soon, e-ticketing will commence and access into the train terminal area will be electronically through the e-tickets.
“As a corporation, we are going further to make sure that we give people the best of rail service by introducing e-ticketing. The procurement process has started and we are in the next phase right now.
“Hopefully in the next three months, it will be deployed and linked to access control which means that by the time you want to board, you won’t be having human interface with our personnel. Your ticket if you flash it at the gate, it will open for you and if it is not valid, it will not open for you” he noted.
Nnorli also disclosed that the corporation has fought and ended tickets racketeering after the introduction of new coaches in January this year.
He said; “Prior to January 4th 2018 before we added more stock to our rake, we had only five coaches out of which one is baggage van, which means we had only four and the carrying capacity of the four was about 320 passengers per trip.
“So there were reported cases of ticket racketeering but with the addition of ten more coaches on the 4th of January 2018 which increased our carrying capacity, the reports of ticket racketeering has now become a thing of the past.”
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