Railways' new software to let you travel all together

Those who have ever been separated by Indian Railways while traversing from one destination to another due to the paucity of confirmed berths at the time of booking, the Ministry of Railways has come to their rescue with a plan to keep them united even in train journeys. According to sources, the ministry is all set to introduce a refurbished ticket booking software that would allow passengers under different categories to get their choice of berths.

"As per the existing software, the tickets are being booked randomly wherein passengers get berth allotment on the basis of availability in any particular coach. It's the drawback of the present software that sometimes, senior citizen, women, etc don't get seats of their choice as the programming of the software is such that it can't hold back unreserved seat of any category for a longer period," the source said.

"We get several complaints as well as requests to modify booked tickets so that all travelling members of a family can travel in the same coach, which is a very cumbersome task for ticket booking agency. There are instances of senior citizens not getting lower berths. Sometimes they manage to 'adjust' their berths by requesting their co-passengers in running trains and if in case a co-passenger refuse to 'adjust', senior citizens, women, etc have to travel on their allotted berths," the source said.

Explaining about the new mechanism, the source said, "Under the new ticket booking software, the berth number or coach number wouldn't be printed on the ticket, rather the tickets would be issued with 'confirmed' status. The charting or allocation of seats would be done just a few hours prior to departure of trains, so that members of a family, any special category passengers would get allotted berths as per their choice."

"The proposed new software, which is set to be rolled out by year end, would help railways in saving its operating cost too as it will prevent railways from running trains with capacity even if all seats of coaches are not booked. As per the existing booking practice, tickets are being randomly booked in every coach, mandating railways to run all bogies, that would not happen once the new mechanism comes into place," the source said, adding that united by blood would not get separated by railways.