Soon, buy unreserved rail tickets using mobiles

Those anxious moments of waiting in a long queue for buying tickets even as the train you should have boarded leaves you stranded could soon be a thing of the past. The Railways plans to soon allow passengers to buy tickets using their mobile phones. Passengers booking tickets this way will get a confirmation message, which they can show to the ticket collector when asked.

This facility will be available even on a basic model handset. “A majority of the 75 crore mobile handsets are not feature-rich. We are looking for a solution to let even passengers using an ordinary phone to buy tickets,” Mr S.S. Mathur, General Manager (IT) of Indian Railways, told Business Line .

There, however, would be riders. Once booked, the ticket cannot be forwarded. Also, people cannot buy a ticket after getting into the train. “We will bar sale of tickets after departure time,” he said.

Mr Mathur, who was here to speak on the opportunities in the Government sector at the two-day IT conclave-Advantage AP, said the Railways had called for Expressions of Interest to roll out the plan. A pilot is expected to begin in two-three months.

Complaint solution

The Railways has decided to use IT to route complaints to the officers concerned. “Complaints can be tracked to the last point. We have launched pilots in the South Central Railway and parts of North. We hope to start the facility by June,” Mr Mathur said.

Trackside monitoring

With a view to assessing efficacy of rolling stock, the Railways has begun trials on monitoring performance of wheels, axle boxes and all other components of trains as they move on the tracks.

"We will install certain equipment along the tracks that capture attributes to create a pattern. This data will be extrapolated on standard data to ascertain efficacy of all the rolling stock," he said.

GIS opportunity

The logistics behemoth will also begin mapping of all its assets, including the tracks and storage facilities. “We have prepared a concept note on this. It is not just noting longitude and latitude. It will gather complete picture of our assets on a scalable map,” he said. Small and medium enterprises in the IT sector would have a big opportunity in this. “They can participate in the mapping, interpolation of maps, managing large databases and creating interfaces to interact with that data,” Mr Mathur said.

“They can also expect work as various manufacturing units of Railways take to automation. Training of Railways to support this process would also throw up opportunity for SMEs,“ he said.

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