Indian railway
Indian Railways is going to make a big change in its passenger reservation system (PRS), which will increase the capacity of ticket booking by four times. At present, PRS of Railways is capable of booking about 25,000 tickets per minute, but after the upgrade, this capacity will increase to 1 lakh tickets per minute. This initiative will relieve passengers to a great extent from long wait and technical hurdles in ticket booking.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav told in Parliament that this upgrade is being done through Center for Railway Information Systems (CRIS). Under this, hardware, software, network equipment and safety structure will be widespread improvement. The new system will be based on the latest cloud technology, which will not only increase speed but will also improve security and stability.
Digital infrastructure will be ready for future
The current PRS system was implemented in the year 2010 and is based on the Itianium server and open VMS. Time is needed to convert this technically old structure into a modern cloud-based system. The Railway Minister said that this change will prepare the digital infrastructure of the railway for the future.
To increase the convenience of passengers, the Railways has recently launched the Railon App, so that both reserve and unreserved tickets can be easily booked on mobile. Apart from this, the Advanced Reservation Period (ARP) has been reduced from 120 days to 60 days since 1 November 2024, so that the booking trend can be balanced and the incidence of ticket cancellation is reduced.
Number of general coaches will be increased
The railway is also taking major steps for general category passengers. The percentage of non-AC coaches has now reached 70% and plans to create 17,000 new non-AC normal and sleep coaches in the next five years. In the financial year 2024-25 itself, 1,250 normal coaches have been added to long distance trains.
This upgrade will not only accelerate the booking capacity but will also improve the experience of the passengers. Railways claim that this change is being made in view of future demands, which will end the ticket fight and the journey experience will become more convenient and accessible.