The punctuality metric for Indian Railways is up for an overhaul with a new scale for train punctuality on the cards.

Currently, the only punctuality metric for Indian trains is them being ‘on time’, which is accorded to the train if it is less than 15 minutes late. This is however set to change with five grades for the trains being proposed which will also take into consideration the distance the train covers.

The measure was proposed in a recent meeting of senior officials and general managers of the railways. The calculation will be done on the monthly average of train performance on the timing front, with data being recorded by railway zonal units.

For trains covering distances less than 300 km, a delay of five minutes or less will see the train being graded as ‘excellent’, and a delay of 90 minutes or more will be graded as ‘bad’.

For long distance trains, a delay of ten minutes or less will get an ‘excellent’ grade, between ten and 20 minutes ‘very good’, between 20 and 40 minutes ‘good’, 40 minutes and two hours ‘fair’ and more than two hours will see the train being graded as ‘bad’ on punctuality.

Also, an on-board Service Captain, identifiable through a uniform, will be responsible for taking care of passenger issues on long distance journeys.