indian railways digitalisation
TRANSCRIPT
Prepared by :-Vaibhav Shrivastava
Indian Railways
Indian railway is 150 years old
Largest Railway system in world under one management
Lifeline of the country
Biggest civilian employer in the world
No strike in last 30years despite 17 lakh workers
Targeted by public during any Rally, agitation etc.
General Information
Indian Railways covers 64000 of route km along length & width of the country
It runs 12000 trains every day
Carry 1.4 crore passengers & 16 lakh tonnes of goods every day
Fuel efficient system
Infrastructure
Railways has 7500 engines, 38000 coaches & about 2.5 lakh of wagons
7000 stations & about 500 computerized passenger reservation centers
1 lakh km of track
17 lakh employee (10 lakh in Group C) including 10000 officers
6 lakh staff Quarters & Biggest township Kharagpur has 12000 Quarters
Organisation
3 tier Management system
Top – Railway board or Ministry of Railways headed by Chairman Railway Board
Middle -16 zones headed by General Managers
Bottom -67 divisions headed by Division Railway Managers
Digitalisation of
Indian Railways
Photovoltaic Technology
Alternative method of supplementing grid supply by the use of Diesel Generator sets pose considerable logistic problems
(PVs) are arrays of cells containing a Solar photovoltaic material that converts solar radiation into direct current electricity
Materials presently used for photovoltaics include monocrystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, microcrystalline silicon, cadmium telluride, and copper indium selenide/sulfide
Solar cells produce direct current electricity from light, which can be used to power equipment or to recharge a battery
Passenger Reservation
System (PRS)
Around 5.5 lakhs passengers in reserved accomodations everyday
PRS facilitates booking and cancelling of tickets from any of the 4000 Terminals all over the country
PRS was launched on 15 November 1985 (IMPRESS)
1987- PRS implemented at Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Secunderabad
Failure of IMPRESS due to addition of new locations and many redefinitions
Passenger reservation system
Country Wide Network for Computerised Enhanced Reservation and Ticketing (CONCERT) was developed by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), New Delhi & implemented in 1994 at secunderabad
PRS servers maintained at the five sites in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Secunderabad and operate in a distributed database process environment
PRS networking of entire Indian Railways completed in April, 1999
Passenger reservation systemContinue. . .
PRS is running currently at 1,200 locations, Deploying 4,000 terminals , covering journeys of 3,000 trains and executing ONE MILLION passenger transactions per day
Internet booking of tickets was started In August 2002
TATKAL has been converted from a separate coach to a normal Quota and enabled for all trains in 2004
Internet booking timings extended to 5:30 a.m. – 11:30 p.m. from March 2005
Passenger reservation systemContinue. . .
CONCERT NETWORK TOPOLOGYCONCERT NETWORK TOPOLOGY
Delhi PRS
Mumbai PRS
Chennai PRS
kolkata PRS
Secunderabad PRS
2 MBPS (x2) Leased Line
2 MBPS (x2) Leased Line6
2 MBPS Leased Line
2 MBPS (X 2) Leased Line
2 MBPS Leased Line
2 MBPS (x2) Leased Line
Delhi
SecBad
Calcutta
Mumbai
Chennai
Communication of all terminals with their server was established using Railway/Department of Telecommunication (DOT) channel lines, fibre optic cable/microwave channels, switches, modem, multiplexers etc
System has the capability of issuing reserved tickets from anywhere to anywhere, in any train, date or class between any pair of stations from any booking terminal of the PRS
Main modules of the PRS are the Reservation module, the Cancellationand Modification Module, the Charting Module, the Accounting Module and the Database Module
Major outputs generated by the system are Reservation cum journey tickets, Cancellation/Modification tickets, Reservation Chartsand Daily Terminal Cash Summary
Unreserved Ticketing System
(UTS)
Printed ticket
Till the 1990s, tickets were manually issued
Printed Card Ticket (PCT) had all the details like origin, destination, class, fare etc
Booking clerk had to stamp the date and time of issue using a dating machine
Today:•17 million passengers travel by Indian Railways every day•Less than 1 million travel on reserved tickets•Unreserved passengers contribute over 8700 crores anually to railway revenues that is around 53% of Indian Railways income from passenger traffic
Printed tickets : Why Not ?
Every station had to stock tickets for every possible destination
Stations were required to stock 10-20 months requirement of tickets
Protection of tickets from termites, rodents, leaky roofs etc. was also required because each PCT had a monetary value
Since PCTs had the fare pre-printed on them, whenever a fare change was to be implemented the station staff at each station had to manually correct the fare on each ticket in stock
Misuse of PCT- like re-use if the issue date impression was faint
Handling of tickets for all destinations was not possible at important junctions
Accounting reports were sent manually to Zonal Railway headquarters on a 10 day periodicity
Printed tickets : Why Not ?Continue. . .
Self Printing Ticketing MachineA step towards modernisation. . .
In 1990s microprocessor based SPTMs were introduced at selected busy stations of Indian Railways
Advantages of SPTM• Large stocks of pre-printed tickets were not required• The machines printed the details of each ticket on demand on pre-formatted security paper• Paper tickets were eliminated.• SPTM tickets could not easily be faked or re-used.• Universal counters selling tickets for all directions became possible.• Station Accounting was done by the computer, saving manual effort
Drawback of SPTM
In case of change in fares each machine’s programming logic and data base had to be corrected individually by a trained engineer
A passenger could buy a ticket from any counter at a station, cancellation had to be done at the same counter from which the ticket was bought
Revenue accountal data had to still be manually carried to each Zonal Railway headquarter for central accounting which continued to be unreliable and out of date
Unreserved ticketing requires 24x7 operations, thus SPTM resulted in frequent breakdowns because of the tough environmental conditions at railway stations
Birth of UTS
CRIS developed UTS & it was implemented in 2002
UTS is developed on UNIX operating system with C++ language interface for the front-end and SYBASE for the backend database
UTS provides the facility to purchase unreserved tickets three days in advance of the date of journey
Passenger can buy a ticket for any destination from the UTS counter for all destinations which are served by that station
Passengers can cancel their tickets upto one day in advance of the journey from any station provided with a UTS counter
Advantages of UTS
Reduced queue length
Enable advance planning of unreserved journey
Reduced crowds at booking offices and stations, making ticket purchase more comfortable
Allow Indian Railways to plan extra trains and coaches as per trend of sales registered in the system
Unreserved itinerary planning possible, tickets available from any station to any station
Freight Operation Information
System (FOIS)
Freight is the backbone of the Indian Railways and contributes more than 66 per cent of this organisation's earnings
FOIS is an integrated information and management system for controlling and monitoring the multifarious activities in freight operations
Computerized FOIS covers almost the entire Indian Railways network
FOIS enables Continuous cargo visibility
FOIS comprises the Rake Management System (RMS) for handling the operating portion and Terminal Management System (TMS) pertaining to the commercial transactions
Functionality : FOIS
Live monitoring of all freight trains giving their current position in computerised territory and their expected time of arrival at destination
Commodity wise flow of freight trains for customers like power houses, refineries, fertilisers and cement plants, steel depots and public freight terminals, enabling the recipients of consignments to have an accurate forecast of cargo arrivals, giving them adequate time to complete preparatory arrangement to handle the cargo
Monitoring of out bound loaded rakes in the same manner.
Monitoring of detachments from block rakes to track wagons getting detached at a location or missing
Analysis of total demand for rail transport and its logical matching with incoming rakes to optimise supply of empty rakes for loading
Generates as many as 163 managerial reports
Continue. . .Functionality : FOIS
System Architecture
Based on client server
Technology using middle ware & RDMS
Application servers linked to a central database
National Train Enquiry System
(NTES)
Provides information regarding
Arrival/Departure of passenger trains including Expected time of arrival (ETA) of trains
Platform berthing of passenger trains
Journey Planning
Facilities available at stations
Railway Rules
Running Status of Trains (trains running on/behind schedule)
Expected Arrival of all trains at a station during the selected timeframe
Expected Departure of all trains at a station during the selected timeframe
List of all trains running between the selected source and destination stations
Interlinking between Modules
Parcel Management System
Following Functions are covered
Parcel Booking, Cancellation and Loading
Monitoring and tracking of Parcels
Demurrage and Wharfage Calculation
Printing of Parcel labels
Networking of all parcel offices
RFID tags for tracing parcels
Large complex Infrastructure System such as the Indian Railway can benefit greatly from the intelligent use of IT
Using information technology for greater efficiency
Added advantages•Freight revenue enhancement•Passenger revenue enhancement•Improvements in Customer and public service•Investment optimization
Benefits of Digitalisation