Bangladesh, Iran and Sri Lanka have sought help from the Indian Railways to implement IT solutions in ticketing and asset management.

“There is potential opportunity for ticketing system and IT systems used for asset maintenance in Bangladesh, Iran and Sri Lanka,” SN Das, Managing Director, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the IT arm of Railways, told BusinessLine .

Indian Railways is one of the largest networks globally going by assets, number of passengers and freight handling. Its ticketing system comprises online delivery for reserved and unreserved passenger seats.

For reserved tickets, the Railways has a passenger reservation system (PRS), which is the back-end for the entire online e-ticketing system as well as 12,798 passenger reservation terminals spread across 3,323 locations. Online tickets are booked through the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) in this segment. Almost 58 per cent of the tickets for this segment are booked online.

Unreserved segment

For the unreserved passenger segment, CRIS is in the process of developing multiple solutions to deliver tickets through automated routes. These include automatic ticket vending machines, cash and smart card-operated vending machines and smartphone-based applications to ensure paperless tickets for season and daily tickets.

However, automated delivery is yet to catch up in the unreserved segment with about 12 per cent of 7.5 million such tickets being sold through automated vending machines. CRIS hopes this share will go up as it puts up more currency-based ticket vending machines.

“We have started installing currency vending machines since November and will install 450 machines by March,” said Das. Till mid-January, 2,100 automatic ticket vending machines (ATVMs) and 226 cash and smart card ticket vending machines have been commissioned.

CRIS has also developed a coaching management system and a terminal management system.

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