From Friday, buy platform tickets through your mobile

You would not have to queue up to buy a platform ticket at the New Delhi and Hazrat Nizamuddin railway stations. Platform tickets at these two major stations can now be booked through a mobile-based application to be launched by the Railways on Friday.

Apart from paperless platform tickets, other mobile app based IT initiatives to be launched on Friday include paperless season ticket on New Delhi-Palwal Section and a train enquiry app on the iOS platform. These new services would be launched by Minister of Railways Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu. These initiatives are part of Railways mission programme of enabling rail ticket purchase through 'Operation Five Minutes' and in line with Digital India initiative.

The mobile application has been developed by railways own IT organization Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS).

Apart from these IT initiatives, Mr. Prabhu will also inaugurate two new escalators on platform number 16 (Ajmeri Gate Side) at the New Delhi railway station on Friday.

Earlier last month, Mr. Prabhu had launched the paperless unreserved ticketing mobile application on the New Delhi- Palwal section – UTSonMobile. Cash/Smart Card operated ticket vending machines were also inaugurated at the New Delhi railway station, along with ‘Parichaalan’ App for Freight Operation Monitoring.

The app allows passengers to access unreserved ticketing system (UTS) application through their Android or Windows smart phones. Instead of carrying a paper ticket, commuters can show the booking on their mobile screens. The Cash/Smart Card operated Ticket Vending machine (CoTVM) installed at the New Delhi railway station last month is an unmanned self-operated kiosk which can be used by passengers themselves to buy unreserved tickets through cash or smart cards. The ticket vending machines are expected to reduce queue length at existing ticket counters by providing an alternate unmanned ticketing solution and mode of payment.

‘Parichalan’ is another mobile application conceptualized and developed by CRIS to make decision making on freight operations easy and user friendly. The application represents data in a pictorial and graphical manner that is easy to comprehend and makes the information dynamic and current in nature. Instead of focusing on post-mortems, Parichalan moves operations management systems to a higher level of real time decision making, a railway official said.