The New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS), with its bustling platforms and teeming crowds, paints a vivid picture of life on the go. Amidst this organized chaos, the porters, or coolies as they’re locally known, tirelessly serve travelers. But how much do they earn in a day? Let’s guesstimate!
Setting the Scene: Key Assumptions
1. Homogeneity: For simplicity, we assume all days to be alike, irrespective of weekends, holidays, or weekdays.
2. Operational Details: NDLS, functioning as a terminus or junction, sees trains starting or ending their journeys here. Each train spends approximately 60 minutes on the platform.
3. Platform Details: NDLS boasts 20 platforms. Twelve can host trains with 24 compartments, while the remaining eight cater to 16-compartment trains. Within the 24-compartment trains, there are 10 AC sleeper compartments and 3 non-AC sleeper compartments. The 16-compartment trains hold 6 AC sleeper compartments and 2 non-AC sleeper compartments.
4. Porter Demand: Primarily, passengers from AC and non-AC sleeper compartments seek porters, given they’re likely carrying more luggage.
5. Operational Hours: The station never sleeps, operating 24/7. We categorize the day into high (12 hours), medium (9 hours), and low (3 hours) traffic periods.
6. Porter Charges: A porter typically charges INR 175 for their services, which factors in the distance between platforms, luggage weight, and the number of pieces.
Diving into the Numbers: Estimating Train Traffic
To gauge the potential earnings of porters, we first need to understand the train traffic:
1. 24-compartment trains:
High traffic: 12 x (3/3) x 12 = 144
Medium traffic: 12 x (2/3) x 9 = 72
Low traffic: 12 x (1/3) x 3 = 12
Total: 144 + 72 + 12 = 228
2. 16-compartment trains: High traffic: 8 x (3/3) x 12= 96
Medium traffic: 8 x (2/3) x 9 = 48
Low traffic: 8 x (1/3) x 3 = 8
Total: 96 + 48 + 8 =152
From this data, the total addressable compartments (where porters are potentially needed) sum up to 228 x 13 + 152 x 8 = 4180.
Assuming a porter per two addressable compartments gets a trip, we’re looking at 2090 trips. Therefore, the total revenue accrued from these trips is INR175 x 2090 = INR365,750.
Sanity Check: Ensuring Our Estimations Hold Water
If a porter’s trip averages about 100 minutes (from identifying a customer to service completion), and they work for about 11 hours daily (excluding breaks), they can manage approximately 6.6 trips each day. This results in individual earnings of INR1,155 daily.
Given our total revenue estimate of INR365,750, this suggests NDLS is bustling with around 317 porters daily (365,750/1,155). This count seems plausible, considering the station’s size and footfall.
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