Question : Funds for Rail Line Project

(a) whether the Railways are satisfied with the system of ticketing and fare collection in vogue and if so, the details thereof;

(b) whether the Railways are aware that touts and other unscrupulous elements have dented the ticketing mechanism and if so, the reaction of the Government thereto;

(c) whether the Railways propose to modernise/transform the existing ticketing infrastructure and promote the current practice of e-tickets on mobile, tablets and other IT enabled services in a big way;

(d) if so, the details thereof including the funds likely to be incurred for the purpose; and
(e)the time by which the new mechanism is likely to be introduced?

MINISTER OF RAILWAYS
(SHRI SURESH PRABHAKAR PRABHU)
(a) to (e) A Statement is laid on the Table of the House.
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STATEMENT REFERRED TO IN REPLY TO PARTS (a) TO (e) OF STARRED QUESTION NO.185 BY SHRI HARISH CHANDRA ALIAS HARISH DWIVEDI TO BE ANSWERED IN LOK SABHA ON 03.08.2015 REGARDING MODERNISATION OF TICKETING INFRASTRUCTURE / MECHANISM.


(a) Yes, Madam. Indian Railways have taken a large number of steps to make the booking/reservation of tickets and fare collection easier and user friendly by introduction of facility of booking of reserved tickets through internet and mobile phones, by proliferation of computerised Passenger Reservation System (PRS) centres at about 3100 locations, providing PRS counters in about 300 Post Offices, provision of Yatri Ticket Suvidha Kendra (YTSK) licensee scheme etc. Further, the capacity of the e-ticketing system has been expanded with the launch of the Next Generation e-ticketing System (NGeT). This new e-ticketing system has an enhanced capacity of booking 7200 tickets in a minute as against the capacity of 2000 tickets per minute of the old system.
For public convenience, proliferation of Unreserved ticketing has also been done through setting up of Computerised Unreserved Ticketing Counters at Railway Stations, appointment of Jan Sadharan Ticket Booking Sewaks (JTBS) for disbursing Unreserved tickets and launch of Mobile application for booking Unreserved tickets. Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) counters have been provided at more than 5800 locations and about 1500 Automatic Ticket Vending Machines have been installed. Mobile ticketing application for booking unreserved tickets was launched at Mumbai on 25.12.2014 and at Chennai on 13.01.2015. Paperless Unreserved ticketing on Mobile Phones has also been launched at Chennai on 22.4.2015 and between Church Gate - Dahanu Road suburban section of Western Railway on 08.07.2015.
(b) No, Madam. However, some instances of booking of tickets by individual for commercial gains have been reported. Several checks have been introduced to curb the problem.
(c) to (e) Expanding the reach of the ticketing systems is a continuous and ongoing process.

The capacity of the e-ticketing system has been expanded with the launch of the Next Generation e-ticketing System. In addition to more than 3100 locations for issuing reserved tickets, tickets can now be booked online through website as well as through mobile applications.

In order to promote the current practice of reserved e-tickets on mobile or tablets, mobile applications have been launched on Android, Windows, Blackberry and iOS platforms.
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