DEVELOPMENTS IN PRS: HOW THE INFORMATION CAN BE UTILISED FOR IMPROVING THE SYSTEM By:- ANURAG KAPIL IRAS

Concept of Passenger Reservation System Booking Simple ticket selling. No guarantee of seat. Reservation Ticket & guarantee of accommodation.

Development Of The PRS Manual system. Infirmities With The Manual System. –Slow and time consuming –Unbalanced load on clerks – No updating of the of current status –Inadvertent errors by the clerks –Problem of messages –Malpractices

Complications Of The Reservation System 1. Large number of fares – telescopic, circulars etc. 2. Seven different classes of travel. 3. Thirty different quotas. 4. One hundred and twenty five different types of concessions. 5. Ninety different types of the layouts of the passenger coaches. 6. And in same fashion different types of refunds. 7. Accounting. 8. Excess and short fare remittances.

Path Of Computerisation CRIS (Center for Railway Information System) I MPRESS  I MPRESS (Integrated Multi Train Passenger Reservation System) Written in Fortran using VAX system One-to- one communication and linkage. Thus requiring more process time. Cannot respond to many queries simultaneously. Thus reduced efficiency

CONCERT (Country-Wide Network For Computerized Enhanced Reservation And Ticketing) Developed by CRIS. Is a total networking solution to Indian Railways PRS. Operates from five regional centres(Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Secunderabad). Machine language used is 'C‘. One-to- many communication thus requiring less process time. System can respond to many queries. Uses client-server model for distributed computing is a total solution to the networking of the PRS.

Information in a Computerised Ticket Train number Date of travel Distance Class & Coach of accommodation Originating & Destination station Boarding station Seat & Berth number Sex and Age of the passenger Charges paid in figures and words Travel Authority Time of departure at the boarding station and originating station PNR number Random number unique to train-date-class

Utilization of Reports by the Traffic Accounts Office Station Balance Sheet. Earnings from Originating, Terminating Traffic. Budgetary processes. Cancellation trends. Monitoring that the customer is paying proper amount. Issue bills to Defence, P &T, Parliament and Assemblies. Apportionment calculations. Traffic Fore-casting.

Improvements (Usually the Information is Delayed) Traffic Accounts be given a dummy terminal to monitor the data and the information. All the information be made available to the Traffic Accounts Office On-Line.