Journalism of Courage
After facing ridicule on social networking websites and criticism from consumer courts for its tardy and erratic electronic ticket booking system,the Railways is finally ready to make amends.
To solve the problem of its website slowing down in response to an escalating demand for e-tickets,the Railways will introduce a next-generation e-ticketing system,which aims to make booking 50 per cent faster.
An internal assessment by the Railways found that 85 per cent of those visiting the ticketing website,irctc.co.in,dont actually purchase a ticket. But every person still uses up the websites resources,slowing it down and even leading to failed transactions.
A Rs 5 crore upgrade to the system will ensure that the journey planner and the actual process of purchasing tickets on the website are separate. At present,around 5 lakh tickets are booked every day.
While the journey planner will provide information of ticketing,it is only when the user hits a book now button that the actual system of ticket purchase will be deployed.
We have ensured that the journey planner is a smooth exercise so everyone gets to research trains and routes without slowing down the system for others, said Sunil Kumar,Managing Director of Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS),the IT-arm of the Railways. The aim is to increase the booking capacity to 7000 tickets a minute.
