Indian Railways Budget for 2008-09 - Booking of Rail Tickets Through Mobile Phones
The Minister of Railways, Shri Lalu Prasad today announced several new initiatives to make the travel experience pleasant, comfortable and secure. Presenting the Railway Budget for 2008-09 in the Lok Sabha, he said that a multi-pronged strategy using information technology has been prepared to permanently terminate long queues at railway ticket reservation counters within two years. The Railways are exploring the option of issuing tickets through mobile phones besides increasing number of UTS counters to 15000 and Automatic Ticket Vending Machine counters to 6000 to facilitate availability of ticket in neighbourhood. The Railway Minister also announced extension of e-ticketing to wait-listed passengers and of Jansadharan Ticket Booking Seva to all Zonal Railways. These steps would provide employment to thousands of unemployed youth besides ensuring easy availability of railway tickets.
Shri Lalu Prasad said that now all overnight mail and express trains will have on-line coach indication display boards to give information about running of the trains and likely time of arrival of approaching stations continuously. This facility would be very helpful to the passengers deboarding trains at night. The public address system which is presently available only in Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains will be made available to other select mail and express trains. Information boards displaying on line information about train arrival-departure and platform berthing will be installed at parking lots and entrance gates besides platforms of 100 ‘A’ and ‘B’ category stations. On-line reservation availability information boards will also be installed at reservation offices of all ‘A’ and ‘B’ category stations.
The Railway Minister said that to make the traveling more comfortable it has been decided that all Rajdhani trains will have LHB design coaches by March 2010 and remaining Shatabdi trains by March 2011. LHB coaches with stainless steel ICF bogies, which are more comfortable and have 10-16 per cent more carrying capacity will also be provided in mail and express trains besides Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains. To make the journey more comfortable, the Railway Ministry has decided to upgrade all low and medium level platforms by increasing their height. Lifts and escalators will also be installed at 50 major stations. Beside this, every platform of all ‘D’ category stations will be provided shelters to give relief from heat, cold and rain. All ‘B’ & ‘D’ category stations which have high level platforms will be provided with foot over bridges to check inconvenience to passengers. Platforms of 30 stations will be extended during the current year for running longer passenger trains, multi-level car parking lots and modernized car parking facilities will be created at 30 major stations.
Stressing on cleanliness in the Railway network, Shri Lalu Prasad said that the Railway had started a pilot project for onboard cleaning by professional agencies on some Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains which had resulted in satisfactory results. Therefore, it has been decided that onboard cleaning will be introduced on all Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Superfast mail and express trains, using modern machines. All 36000 coaches would be provided clean toilets by the end of the 11th Plan at a cost of Rs. 4000 crore to put a permanent end to the problem of discharge from the train toilets. Besides this, all LHB coaches will have ergonomically designed modular toilets with attractive interiors for better hygiene and cleanliness.
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