Railway embraces technology for happy journey

NEW DELHI, INDIA: After bringing revolution in Passengers Reservation System (PRS) by introducing ticket booking facility online, Indian Railways is working further to enhance comfort of passengers in its reservation system.

CIOL interacted with some senior officials of Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS), responsible for the implementation of Information and Communication Technology in Indian Railways, before CRIS Day, and learnt that CRIS is working on projects to make the services greener and simultaneously improve its various processes by deploying technology.

These processes include improvement in PRS by providing confirmation to ticket in waiting list while on the move and sending instant accommodation availability status on the running train to all stations and even the stations to which it would be approaching.

Internally known as the Hand Held Terminal (HHT) system, it has been provided to Travelling Ticket Examiners (TTEs) on a pilot basis on a total of twelve Rajadhani Express trains and some trains running between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

IRCTC had also revamped its website, to make it more user friendly. Also Oracle is helping it in freight management.

TTEs play a critical role in the efficient allotment of accommodation to the millions of passengers who reserve seats in trains.

“Use of hand-held devices by the TTEs has been envisioned as a means of easing their work, as well as making the process of berth allotment on running trains visible to passengers. It will also improve the quality of information in our databases for further analysis by our business intelligence systems,” elaborated SB Roy, Director, Passengers Reservation System (PRS), CRIS.

At present TTEs have to carry sheaves of paper reservation charts, and refer to them each time they check a passenger ticket or allot a berth on the train. With the use of hand-held devices, this paper gets eliminated.

“This will benefit passengers in two ways. First, passengers at stations that the train is yet to cross would be able to book tickets for seats that could not be occupied by the passengers who had already booked them. Secondly, passengers claiming refund against tickets that they had booked but could not travel on would be greatly facilitated,” explained Seema Kumar, General Manager in charge of the project.

Even TTEs are enjoying using these hand-held devices for ticket checking.

“With the implementation of Hand-Held Terminals on Shatabdi Trains, it has become very convenient to do ticket checking as need for carrying multiple paper charts has been completely eliminated,” said Ramesh Kumar, Deputy Train Superintendent, Shatabdti Express Trains, Delhi.

CRIS is also working on systems to provide train tickets on mobile phone of passengers.

“In case of a reserved ticket, a passenger will just have to show an SMS to the TTE instead of a paper ticket. The SMS will be sent from our server at the time of booking the ticket,” said one of the CRIS managers, who did not want to be named, and is involved in the project.

He added that since the project is under development, and will have to get the board approval, it will be too early to comment on the timeline for the availability of this facility.

With over one million passengers traveling daily on reserved tickets, the tons of paper used for printouts can be saved with this facility.

CRIS is experimenting with the system to send unreserved tickets directly to passengers’ mobile phones. Applications are being tested that would generate tickets in the mobile phone itself. However, the implementation of such systems is still some time away, since various clearances would have to be provided by the Ministry of Railways, before such tickets could become a convenient reality for the millions of passengers using train services daily.