chennai in the wake of reports that the number of people travelling ticketless on trains is growing southern railway is planning an intensive checking drive on suburban and nonsuburban sections in the coming months the number of people travelling ticketless and those indulging in irregular travel travelling first class with second class ticket has been particularly high in the last few months officials say twentytwo special checks were conducted at suburban and nonsuburban stations in september against the 12 in april in october the railways raked in a record rs 123 crore in fines from checking operations at all stations about rs 103 crore was realised from such checks in september this includes ticketless travel ineligible class of travel and unbooked baggagethis shows that the number of people indulging in ticketless travel and irregular travel is high such drives also lead to an increase in the sale of tickets through counters whenever checks are increased our window earnings go up there has been a 83 increase in unreserved earnings said a senior railway officialthere has also been an increase in the number of commuters who used suburban trains from april to september about 198 most cases of ticketless travel have been reportedly found on the chennaitiruvallur and chennaigumidipoondi routes however no steady increase in ticketless travel has been noticed on a month on month basis statistics from special drives in the aprilseptember period show that cases were high in july and augustwe cannot explain the pattern but assume that the festival and holiday season may be the reason for increase in ticketless travel the railway official addeda majority of the suburban commuters caught without tickets did it deliberately in most cases commuters prefer to go ticketless than miss a train if a train is on the platform some commuters often rush to board it instead of standing in a queue to buy a ticket said chennai divisional railway manager s anantharaman automatic ticket vending machines installed at several suburban stations saw poor patronage as commuters here dont prefer spending upfront for travel unlike commuters in mumbainevertheless more counters have been put up at guindy after feedback showed that queues were long there the exisiting counters are adequate to issue tickets because issuing of tickets is fast in five minutes staff are able to clear 12 persons he added