NRC to begin hourly train service on Abuja-Kaduna route in April – MD

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the Nigerian Railways Corporation (NRC) will have a train service every hour on the Abuja-Kaduna train service in April this year.

Currently, the train services operates within intervals of about three hours. This means passengers who miss a particular train would wait nearly three hours for another service. However, this will end with an hourly service.

The Managing Director/CEO of NRC, Mr. Fidet Okhiria, who disclosed this to our Correspondent at the weekend, also said the recently procured two locomotives and eight coaches are expected to arrive Kaduna by first week of April, 2020.

They will be commissioned immediately and put to use, he said. He also said, with the new capacity, more express services will be introduced for individuals who want to travel fast without the disruptions of stopping at every station, however, with a price.

“Two locomotives have arrived. You know it’s not easy to move them by road. We hope that in the next three weeks, the two locomotives and eight coaches would have arrived Kaduna.

“Immediately, we will commission them and we will start operations with them. With that, we can have the hourly train,” Mr. Okhiria said.

“There will be non-stop train to Kaduna. At the same time, the price will not be the same again because of the seats there. We have the one that can only take 24 people, we have another two that can take 56 people and the normal one. So, we don’t expect people who will relax their chair to also pay the same price,” he explained.

He, however, said there will be no general price review except the new extra comfort service.

Revenue is up

The NRC CEO also said it’s monthly revenues have gone up. “On the Monthly turnover, we take in close to N200million a month. I don’t have the figures for passenger traffic off hand now,” he said.

SOURCE: DailyTrust