New IRCTC website: on Thursday announced that a will be launched next month. Speaking during an interaction with students at Jaipur’s Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT), the minister said that a new IRCTC website will be launched by July 15.
Speaking to Indianexpress.com, a senior railway official said that the new IRCTC website is expected to feature advanced, faster and modern functions aimed at enhancing the overall user experience.
Earlier in May, the Ministry of Railways announced plans to upgrade its nearly 40-year-old passenger reservation system (PRS) with a modernised and more advanced platform from August. Indian Railways’ internet ticket booking services was launched in 2002. Currently, about 88 per cent of the country’s total train ticketing demand is being met through online platforms.
The new PRS system is expected to enhance the ticket booking capacity. Last year, the Ministry of Railways said that the new PRS system will allow over 1.5 lakh ticket bookings per minute. “This will be an increase of roughly five times from 32,000 tickets per minute in the current PRS,” it said.
It further said that the ticket enquiry capacity will jump ten times i.e. from 4 lakh to over 40 lakh per enquiry will be possible in a minute time. It added that the new PRS will have a multilingual and user-friendly booking and enquiry interface.
“In the new PRS, users will be able to submit their choice of seat and see the fare calendar. It also has integrated facilities for Divyangjan, students, patients, etc,” it stated.
Last year, Indian Railways launched the RailOne mobile application, also referred to as its ‘super app’, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to offer more accurate predictions on ticket confirmation chances and streamline access to various railway services. When a user books a ticket, the app indicates whether a waitlisted ticket is likely to get confirmed or not.
