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

 
 

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)

·  IMPRESS   (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.