Rail Budget 2013: Soon book railway tickets from mobile phones

NEW DELHI: Given the 'overwhelming response' to the Indian Railways website, Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal on Tuesday announced a project that will allow passengers to book railway tickets from their mobile phones. Bansal also announced an SMS alerts' system for passengers which will provide updates on reservation status.

In his rail budget 2013 speech, Bansal said, "As a follow up to overwhelming response to the Indian Railways website and integrated train inquiry service under 193, a project of SMS alerts to passengers providing updates on reservation status is being rolled out shortly,".

Bansal said that there will be a provision of covering large number of trains under real time information system whereby rail users will be able to access information through nominated websites and mobile phones.

Noting that congestion on the IRCTC website causes inordinate delay in accessing the system for e-ticketing, Bansal announced that by the end of this calendar year railways will put in place a next generation e-ticketing system. "This will bring about a paradigm shift in internet rail ticketing by significantly improving the end user experience with respect to ease of use, response time as well as capacity," he said.

The system shall be able to support 7200 tickets per minute as against 2000 tickets per minute today, he added. Bansal further went on to say that the system will support 1,20,000 simultaneous users at any point in time against the present capacity of 40,000 users. It will have the capability to easily scale up as demand increases in future. "The system will make use of advance fraud control and security management tools thereby further improving transparency in sale of tickets," Bansal explained.

"I plan to roll out a more efficient and people sensitive railway service system. Some of the measures initiated or put are extending availability of the facility of internet booking from 12:30 AM to 11:30 PM, making e-ticketing possible through mobile phones," Bansal said in his maiden railway budget speech.