| Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu Inaugurates Three Passenger Amenity Projects Namely, e-Ticketing Hindi Website, Paperless Unreserved Ticketing on Mumbai Suburban through Mobile Phones and Destination Alert Service in Rajdhani and Duronto through SMS. |
Fulfilling yet another commitments of the Railway Budget 2015-16, the Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu inaugurated three passenger amenity projects namely, NGeT (Next Generation e-Ticketing) Hindi Website, Paperless Unreserved Ticketing through Mobile Phones for Mumbai suburban (Western Railway Network) and Destination Alert Service in Rajdhani and Durontothrough SMS at a programme held at Rail Bhawan today. The persons present on the occasion included Chairman Railway Board Shri A. K. Mital and other Railway Board members. The paperless ticket on Mumbai suburban was inaugurated through video-conferencing between Rail Bhawan in Delhi and Western Railway Hqrs. in Mumbai.
Referring to his Railway Budget announcements, the Railway Minister said that today with the launching of a new service portal for booking e-Tickets in Hindi for Railway passengers, an important Railway Budget commitment. He also said recently we have taken some other passenger friendly initiatives like launch of SUVIDHA class of trains which are dynamic fare based premium trains and automatic fare refund system in case of cancellation of a train. We have also taken steps to improve Railway freight income by way of adoption of new freight incentive schemes. We also observed Rail Yatri Pakhwada recently, which was one of the biggest public outreach events in the history of India and helped develop connection with around seven million people across the country. The Senior Railway Functionaries interacted with the public during this fortnight and worked for resolving their problems. Many new projects were commissioned during this period and the entire Railway machinery was galvanised. These steps are probably something unprecedented. We must work for the development of the organisation. The Minister thanked media persons who carried along with them the total concept of Rail Yatri Pakhwada and made the people’s participation a reality which is very important. The Minister said that People and we must work together to make it all success.
The Minister said that railways have always been conscious about passenger amenity and as a fallow up, design of coaches has been improved with cost economy. Punctuality, comfort of Railway passengers have always been our priority. Railway Budget announcements are being translated into reality. Referring to the paperless ticket concept, the Railway Minister said that this has successfully worked in Chennai Subrban Railway Network and now it has been launched in Mumbai Subarban Railway Network. Similarly, destination alert in Rajdhani and Duranto trains which has been launched today are very useful services for the passengers. The Railway Minister pointed out that all these IT initiatives are in line with the digital India concept of Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narender Modi.
Referring to the most ambitious Railway project of Dedicated Freight Corridor, the Railway Minister pointed out that the Cabinet has recently approved the revised cost estimate for this project of Rs.81459 crore. The Minister also pointed out that Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India has awarded contracts worth more than Rs.15,000 crores in recent months which is a remarkable progress and which is much more than the total works awarded by the same organisation in the last six years.
Speaking on the occasion, Chairman, Railway Board, Shri A.K.Mital, said that within 132 days, 64 budget commitments have been met. Paper less ticketing for 130 km Western Railway distance covering 35 stations, SMS alert service in Rajdhani and Duronto, e-Ticketing in Hindi are remarkable steps taken by Indian Railways and these amenities can be extended to other sections of the Railways in future. Today Hindi Portal of e-ticketing has been inaugurated and we can switch over to other languages very soon. There are 37 lakh daily passengers on western Railways and we will try to cover our MST holders also under the paperless concept.
Additional Member (C&IS), Railway Board Shri Mohammad Jamshed gave the welcome address. Ms. Vandana Nanda, MD, CRIS, the IT arm of Indian Railways was specially present on the occasion.
NGeT (Next Generation e-Ticketing) Hindi Website
Indian Railway's E-ticketing System www.irctc.co.in is one of the most widely used 'Government to Citizen' services operational in the country. It caters ·to over 8.5 lakh passengers daily who can reserve berths in trains without leaving their homes.
The launch of Hindi version of www.irctc.co.in will facilitate E-Ticketing portal services for a large section of Hindi speaking population of our country. As a consequence, E-Ticketing service should become more popular and user friendly. This is a significant step forward in fulfilling the Minister of Railways' Budget announcement of multilingual e-ticketing portal.
This is one of the first e-commerce portals made available in Hindi which has a large user base spread all over the country and beyond.
The salient features of the Hindi web-site are given below:
· All pages, information, navigation steps, guidelines, alerts & updates, error messages and feedback form are now available in Hindi.
· All Dynamic information relating to accommodation availability, ticket details, journey planner etc. will be displayed in Hindi.
· Electronic Reservation Slip (ERS) and cancellation slip will be printed in Hindi.
· Citizens who only know Hindi can now easily navigate on the E-ticketing website and perform booking and cancellation transactions, view their transaction history and conduct enquiries.
Paperless Unreserved Ticketing through Mobile Phones
Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) has developed a paperless Unreserved Ticketing feature in Mobile Application "utsonmobile" both for Android and Windows platforms. This will eliminate the need for printing of Unreserved Tickets on ATVMs at the stations. User can download 'App' from Google Play Store or Window Store free of cost.
This service is being rolled out on the Churchgate - Dhanuroad Suburban Section of Western Railway covering 35 stations over 123 kms. distance. For paperless ticketing, GPS co-ordinates of suburban railway tracks on the Churchgate – Dhanuroad Suburban Section, plus 30 meters on either side of the tracks have been earmarked as Geo-Fencing area within which no ticket booking is allowed in order to ensure that passengers have ticket before commencing the journey.
The application provides necessary on-screen alerts to guide the passenger during the booking process. Payment for the ticket is done through the "Railway Wallet" feature in the "App". After booking the ticket, the passenger will get the ticket confirmation screen which contains limited information of the ticket. The paperless journey ticket will be stored in the local mobile application database in the encrypted form which cannot be tampered with. The passenger has to start the journey within 1 hour as per policy for suburban sections. Ticket booked in paperless mode cannot be cancelled in order to prevent claiming of refund after travel.
The ticket has distinct colour scheme everyday and it is embedded with Quick Response (QR) code. It cannot be forwarded to another mobile or edited or printed. The old invalid tickets will be removed from the mobile device through a sync feature in the 'App'.
For the purpose of ticket checking, the application has various features such as colour scheme, show ticket features, secret code of the day, booking time of the ticket and scrolling of legend "IR UNRESERVED TICKETING". In case of mobile in disconnected mode, it will be checked through QR Code.
Destination Alert Service
Destination Alert is a free value-added service to the travelling passengers to alert them about arrival of the train at their respective destinations. It is targeted towards all passengers whose destination comes at night between 11 PM and 7 AM. Our aim is to relieve the anxiety of such passengers. This service involves sending an SMS to a passenger 15 minutes before the train is expected to reach his/her destination during night hours (23:00 to 07:00 hrs). Hence, the passengers are required to provide their mobile number at the time of booking.
The service is being introduced in all Rajdhani and Duronto trains.
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