Chennai: The project that was proposed during the Railway budget 2016-2017 – integrated mobile application for all prime services needed by a passenger – will be launched this week.
It is developed by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) at the cost of Rs 7 crore. Though Indian Railway has spread its wings by providing most of the services online in the past few years, commuters had to access different digital solutions.
“Complaint Management Systems (COMS) was used for complaint registration and grievance redressal, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) application for booking rail tickets, TravelKhana and a few other applications for ordering food on wheels. Often, we used to receive complaints about poor maintenance of some application. So, we wanted to bring everything on one platform and maintain it properly,” said an official.
The app whose name is not yet revealed has another out of the box attraction – facility to book flight tickets apart from providing an entire gamut of traveling — booking ticket, porter, retiring room, cabs, tour packages and ordering food.
The official explained that the application could be used to book all kinds of tickets including a platform ticket. This would reduce queues, wastage and save time.
It is learnt that the application is part of non-fare revenue scheme being undertaken by the Railways as they earn less than five per cent of their revenues through non-tariff sources.
Through scaling up of e-commerce activities, the department aims to earn additional revenue. Moreover, the Prime Minister Office (PMO) has recently given Indian railways a target to increase the non-fare revenue to 15 per cent of the total revenue by financial year 2017-18.
