Using Intelligent Communication System (ICT) to Solve a Problem of Enroute Confirmation of Wait Listed Tickets in Indian Railways

Abstract

Rail transport is one the prominent modes of transportation with reference to goods as well as passenger’s movement in any Economy. Indian Railways also played important role in Economic development of our country and will be at key position in future too. With more than 150 years of old history Indian railways have played a key role in India’s social and economic development too. Indian railway is having one of the World’s largest rail network including broad gauge (61680 kms), meter gauge (3479 kms) and narrow gauge (2209 kms) as on 31st March 20171 1.Indian Railways has grown significantly since its inception in 1853. Today, we can see lots of paradigm shifts, and structural changes in Indian Railways with lots of developments and improvements with reference to facilities and availability with top class infrastructure too. Although the share of railways with reference to freight transportation and passenger movement compare to Road transport is less but despite of this Indian Railways is game changer due to its basic characteristics i.e. it is cheap and affordable means of transportation for millions of passengers. Railways share in passenger and freight movement with reference to surface transport is 15-20% and 30-35% respectively. However, despite of lots of changes and development in Indian Railways with reference to passenger transportation i.e. increase in number of Railways services, trains, types of trains, facilities inside and outside the trains especially on platforms, ticket reservation system and its procedure via technological advancement and digitalization, information to the passengers regarding their ticket status, and so on, still we find certain basic missing link in the services of Indian Railways and due to which it suffers not only revenue losses but many more.Thus, in this paper an attempt is being made to address that particular basic deficiency of Indian Railways reservation system especially with reference to wait listed reservation ticket with the passengers enroute and no information about actual position of the waitlisted ticket enroute in case of vacant seat after departure from the origin point and IInd charting done. This is because even today with reference to enroute checking of tickets by TTE’s, same old manual charting system is being followed and in case of any vacant seat due to any reason, only TTE’s are aware about it and they make money out of it rather than allot it to deserve passengers, in many cases. Hence, this paper is proposing a technological based solution to this particular problem for better convenience of enroute passengers especially with waitlisted or RAC tickets and prevent TTE’s for making illegal money and save revenue loss to the railway through efficiently implementation of suggested ICT within existing systems.1GoI (2018)