Just Like Airlines, Railways To Send SMS Alerts On Train Delays  

In line with the government’s push for a digital India, the railway ministry has sought to make travel convenient one step at a time for it’s passengers.

The newest addition being train alerts via text message. Quite like the airways you will now be informed of the rescheduling of trains in advance on your mobile number.

With the onset of winter fog, hundreds of trains are delayed every year causing massive inconvenience to passengers.

However, ahead of this winter season, the Ministry of Railways has commenced facility of information dissemination via SMS regarding status of trains running late by more than one hour.

This service has been in action since 3 November.

Initially this facility has been started for passengers booked on all Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Tejas and Gatimaan trains.

“SMS giving status of late running is being sent to passengers who are boarding the trains at intermediate stations so that they can reach the station in time for the train. SMS will be sent to passengers who had given their mobile numbers at the time of booking the ticket both for e-ticket and PRS (counter) ticket,” said a statement from the ministry.

Presently, Indian railways has a fleet of 19,000 passenger and goods trains.The volume of passengers carried daily is about 2.22 million.

Alongside, as per reports, the Railways is also mulling a mobile app that will predict if waitlisted train tickets have any chance of getting confirmed, officials said on Sunday.

An recent IANS report quoting a Railway Ministry official said, "The railways is working on an application that will predict if the waitlisted ticket can be confirmed or not."

The report further said the prediction will be based on the passenger operations and booking pattern data of the last 13 years.

Various small and big measures have been announced recently by the government to make rail travel a preferable mode of travel for the people of this country.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) is reportedly developing the complex application for the railways where a user will be informed about the chances of the waitlisted ticket getting confirmed at the time of booking the ticket on the railways new user-friendly website and application.

According to the railways, about 13 lakh tickets are booked every day against a reserved accommodation of 10.5 lakh berths across all classes.

These digital and tech friendly measures come close on the heels of a new and innovative time table announced by the Railways on 1 November that will cut travel time and speed up travel in passenger trains.

Other notable decisions to improve rail services include doubling of the rail lines, replacing old tracks. Improvement of services as also improvement of safety and security of passengers at stations