Top 10 popular Vande Bharat trains in India. Here is the full list

The Kasaragod-Trivandrum Vande Bharat Express has recorded the highest occupancy so far among all the 23 pairs of these semi-high-speed trains running across India, official data revealed last week.

This train has an average occupancy of 183 per cent. The return train from Trivandrum to Kasaragod in Kerala seems to be equally popular, and it is in second spot with an average occupancy of 176 percent.

The Gandhinagar-Mumbai Central Vande Bharat Express, with an average occupancy of 134 per cent, takes the third spot. Five trains were added to the total count only in the last week of June.

Also read: Full list of Vande Bharat trains here; five more trains added

Top Vande Bharat trains by occupancy

Kasaragod-Trivandrum: 183%
Trivandrum-Kasaragod: 176%
Mumbai Central-Gandhinagar: 129%
Varanasi-New Delhi: 128%
Ranchi-Patna: 127%
Patna-Ranchi: 125%
New Delhi-Varanasi: 124%
Dehradun-Amritsar: 105%
Mumbai-Sholapur: 111%
Howrah-Jalpaiguri: 108%
Sholapur-Mumbai: 104%
Jalpaiguri-Howrah: 103%

Also read: Vande Bharat sleeper trains soon; work on at Chennai ICF, says report

The not-so-popular trains

Among the trains that need a leg up in occupancy is the Ajmer to Delhi Cantonment Vande Bharat Express (60 per cent) and the Delhi Cantonment to Ajmer train (83 per cent).

What is train occupancy?

If you are wondering how a train can have more than 100 per cent occupancy, well, this figure is calculated by the total number of passengers travelling on a particular route, including those getting off and boarding it at intervening stations.

So, if a person has booked a ticket from point A to point B, it is considered one booking. From point B, another passenger books the same seat to travel to point C; so, that same seat has two bookings, an official explained to PTI.

Also read: Modi flags off five Vande Bharat Express trains for different states

Fastest on their routes

With 46 routes, Vande Bharat services have now reached all rail-electrified states of the country, covering 24 states and Union Territories. With a maximum permissible speed of up to 160 kmph, the Vande Bharat Express is the fastest passenger train on the routes it is running on. It saves an hour in average compared to the second-fastest train on the same route.

On February 15, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the first Vande Bharat Express between New Delhi and Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. The coaches were manufactured indigenously at the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai.

So far, these trains have made 2,140 trips, and 25,20,370 net passengers have boarded the Vande Bharat Express from April 1, 2022, to June 21, 2023.

(With agency inputs)