Have waitlisted train ticket? Increased chances of ticket confirmation, faster refund on cards from January

If you are an Indian Railways passenger, you are likely to be aware of the pain and hardship that a waitlisted passenger faces even before he or she has set out on the journey. It also causes trouble for fellow passengers. Unavailability of a software that supplies Railways with faster data of passengers who have not boarded the train despite booked tickets has led to irregularities in onboard seat distribution. Many times, waitlisted passengers fail to get confirmed seats even when seats are available!

However, from January 2019, all this is set to change. Indian Railways is equipping its Train Ticket Examiners (TTEs) with Handheld Terminals (HHTs). This will make the TTEs able to check the reserved coaches, allot the vacant berths and transmit information on available berths to the subsequent stations. The HHT can also access the ticketing application and collect excess fares as per rules.

"With the help of Handheld Terminals for TTEs, after all allotments, remaining vacant berths will be sent back to HHT Application Servers and can be viewed on PRS terminal as well as website (indianrail.gov.in) and information of all NT (not travelling) passengers will be sent to coaching refund system to get speedier refund and eliminate the preparation of manual Exception Data Reports (EDR).  Occupancy chart can be viewed on the HHT device to dispense with the manual preparation of food-chart/occupancy chart," railways had said.

Till now, a TTE used to wait till next two stations in case of a vacant seat. The HHT will allow faster updation and allocation of the berths of the NT passengers. Since the device will allow live updation of data, this will make refunds faster. At present, a refund is processed only after the TTE submits its chart report once the journey is over.

The biggest spinoffs of this Indian Railways project are:

a) Revenue Yield Maximization, by making onboard accommodation availability visible to downstream Stations so that they can do current bookings against these vacant seats, realizing additional revenue against the same as presently these seats usually go vacant up to the terminal stations due to non-availability of this information with the prospective Passengers.

b) The Application ensures greater transparency in the allotment of Accommodation onboard.

c)It will ensure better productivity norms amongst TTE’s as the process of ticket checking will get simplified considerably.

Watch This Zee Business Video

The terminal can also be connected to a Point of Sale (POS) machine and charges can be collected digitally.