Indian Railways on Wednesday launched the next generation e-ticketing system, enhancing the booking capacity on the IRCTC website, in order to provide 7,200 tickets per minute and making the whole process much easier, faster and hassle-free .
During the Rail Budget presentation last month, Railway Minister DV Sadananda Gowda had proposed to launch the next generation e-ticketing system.
Gowda's proposal has now been launched by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) on Wednesday, which will allow the booking of 7,200 tickets per minute, compared to the 2,000 tickets in the current system.
The system, developed at a cost of Rs 180 crore, will ensure that 1.2 lakh users can book e-tickets concurrently against the previous capacity of 40,000 simultaneous users at a time.
"The next generation e-ticketing software will do away with the problems of non-availability of website like user sessions getting terminated," TOI quoted an official.
Passengers have also been given the option to track information relating to arrivals and departure of trains and other related information on their mobile phones from CRIS mobile apps on Windows 8 platform.
The app 'National Train Enquiry System (NTES)' is currently available for Windows 8 phones and will soon be launched for Android.
The application has the following features:
-Spot your train
-Live Station
-Train Schedule
-Trains between Stations
-Cancelled Trains
-Rescheduled trains
-Diverted trains
The railways also launched a series of IT-enabled services for users of Go-India smart cards. The card would lessen the transaction time at booking counters as there will not be cash handling during the issuance of tickets.
"Railways are part and parcel of development. It is in the mind of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The PM said all operational part of the railways should be covered online," Gowda said during the inauguration on Wednesday.
Gowda also announced cash awards of Rs 5 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh for CRIS and IRCTC respectively for their work.
