From August, the website of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) will be revamped and Artificial Intelligence will be used to provide a better ticket booking experience to passengers, which will predict the booking pattern for passengers and suggest the best possible combination of trains available, Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav said in a web-based conference here today.

Demand for passenger movement in trains that are being run now are not high. To curtail the spread of Covid-19, Railways has no plans to run any extra passenger trains as of now beyond the 230 special trains that they are running, said Yadav, adding that stopping the spread of Covid-19 is the most important thing.

He added that confirmed tickets are available in most of the trains and tickets reach waiting list only in 58 of 230 trains. Moreover, in those trains, confirmed tickets are available in three-four days. Railways will run more trains on specific routes only when it sees wait-listed tickets of 10-15 days, Yadav said.

On the Shramik Special trains, which Railways ran from May 1 to move migrants to their homes, Yadav said that there is no more demand for running Shramik special trains. The last train was run on July 9, following which there has been no demand for such trains.

He added that Railways has speeded up a host of digital measures, including introduction of QR-based tickets booked through widow and online, and e-filing systems, among others.

He added that the Railway Board has decided to increase the axle load of trains on iron-ore moving routes to enable loading of extra cargo. Also, it plans to change the specification of weigh-in-motion bridges to increase competition and reliability of weighing machines.

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