Indian Railways launches new feature: ‘Public viewing of train charts and vacant berths’
Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal launches the new feature
As part of enhancing travel experience of the passengers and to bring greater transparency, a new facility for ‘Public Viewing of Train Charts and Vacant Berths’ is launched by Piyush Goyal, Minister of Railways & Coal. Railway Board Chairman, V K Yadav, Member Traffic, Railway Board, Girish Pillai, other Railway Board Members and senior officials from Railways were also present on the occasion.
The information about occupancy in trains as per Passenger Reservation Charts will now be available for public view on the internet through IRCTC website (www.irctc.co.in). This will facilitate the prospective passengers in getting the information of the vacant berths available in the train after chart preparation. Complete information of vacant berths from train source as well as intermediate locations will be available to the user. Prospective customer can use the information for online booking of vacant berths or through TTE as per business rules. This feature is available in web as well as mobile version.
Speaking on the occasion, Piyush Goyal said that it is another step to introduce transparency in the system and to add comfort to the passengers.
“By introducing this new online platform for public viewing of train charts will put the practice of searching a Ticket collector in the moving train to an end. This new feature in ticketing system is a dynamic system which will keep upgrading itself as the train proceeds for the destination and make it more transparent as passengers can see the real time availability of berths,” said Goyal
The Minister also announced that IRCTC shall soon add 30 kitchen base and all kitchen bases will equipped with cameras for public viewing. Biodegradable packing of food prepared in these kitchen bases is also being planned so the quality of food is not lost during the transit. He announced that PoS machines will be made available to all TTEs and Catering staff on-board.
“Transparency and accountability are the guiding principles of this Government. We will keep taking further steps to ensure Minimum Government, Maximum Governance in the country,” added the minister.
Speaking on the occasion, Girish Pillai, Member Traffic, Railway Board said that entire effort is to make reservation process as transparent as possible and comfortable to the public.
“The biggest advantage of the system is that the passenger can see which berth is available even after second charts are made. In 20 days all Rajdhani & Shatabdi trains tickets can be booked even after second charts which are released 30 minutes before the departure of the train,” said Pillai.
The user-friendly interface will give a graphical representation of the train coaches and berth-wise accommodation status on www.irctc.co.in website. The system displays coach layout of 9 classes used in the reserved trains of Indian Railways and more than 120 different coach layouts have been incorporated.
This feature displays class wise and coach wise full vacant berth availability information as per the ‘First Chart’ of the train. ‘First Chart’ is prepared four hours in advance to train departure. If the ‘Second Chart’ is also prepared, then the option to view the details of vacant berth available at the time of ‘Second Chart’ will also be displayed. The ‘Second Chart’ is prepared about 30 minutes prior to the departure of the train, to accommodate the information of current reservations and cancellations done after ‘First Chart’. Both the charts will get updated for every charting location as the train heads towards its destination.
To access the features, visit the site www.irctc.co.in – in the home page a new option to view ‘CHARTS / VACANCY’ will be available. On clicking of this option, journey details such as train number, journey date and boarding station will be taken from the user and on entering the same the user will be able to see class-wise and coach-wise number of vacant berths.
The user can further click on a specific coach to see the coach layout along with berth-wise accommodation status like occupied for full journey, occupied for part journey and vacant for full journey.