New Delhi: Union railway minister Piyush Goyal has launched the upgraded version IRCTC’s e-ticketing website.
The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp’s revamped site and app will offer next-level services to commuters, a note from the ministry said.
Train search and selection has been simplified and will be available on one page to enhance booking experience.
Seat availability for all classes will be displayed, along with their respective fares, for all trains on the same page, the note said.
“Scroll and choose ‘Book’ to get a seat on the desired class and train. Earlier, availability and fares were seen only on clicking each train,” it said.
Seat availability on other dates of possible travel can be seen on the same page itself.
A ‘cache system’ has been enabled to give seat availability status to avoid delays in load time.
For wait-listed tickets, the probability of confirmation will be shown on the screen. Earlier, the status of each ticket had to be checked separately.
Predictive entry suggestions using artificial intelligence will be given to passengers when they enter a station.
This will reduce the hassle in searching for stations and also save time in booking tickets.
Checking refund status will be possible in the user accounts page. This feature was not accessible easily earlier.
Details of the journey will be shown on the payments page and the user will be prompted to check and rectify any typographical errors.
IRCTC users will need to visit a passenger reservation system (PRS) counter to rectify errors.
The site also has in-built features such as captcha codes for enhanced cybersecurity.
IRCTC’s e-ticketing website has over 6 crore active users who use the facility to book more than 8 lakh tickets daily.
Some 83% of total reserved rail tickets are booked on IRCTC, shows railway data.
IRCTC’s Next Generation E-ticketing, or NGeT, system was launched in 2014 to enable higher booking loads and a better user interface.