indian railways urs

7/30/2019 Indian Railways URS

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Unreserved Ticketing System

OBJECTIVE:

To study & evaluate the transaction time of issuance & minimize it to large extent.

To provide a breakthrough for advance booking and cancellation of unreserved

tickets from any station

To study the manual operation of existing cancelation procedure & providing

Suggestion for Centralized control for monitoring and auditing

INTRODUCTION TO TOPICS

Generating over 49% of its earnings, Indian Railways needed a solution to centralizethe purchase and management of unreserved tickets. The Unreserved Ticketing System(UTS), a one-of-a-kind modern system, was developed and implemented by CRIS forIndian Railways.

UTS are a state-of-the-art computerized unreserved ticketing mechanism providing animproved customer ticketing experience and seamless process. This implementation hashelped increase operational efficiency and has also enhanced customer servicetremendously.

Indian Railways did not have any structured mechanism for resolving delays on thepart of CRIS in acquisition of hardware and peripheral equipments. The decision of Indian Railways to procure dot matrix printers for initial phases of implementation of UTS at different locations despite knowing its vulnerability to manipulation renderedthe system prone to misuse and frauds.

The system design did not comprehensively incorporate all the business rules and hadvarious deficiencies, which not only cause operational constraints but also warrantedmanual intervention leading to increased security risks and inconvenience topassengers.


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REVIEW OF LITRATURE

Indian Railways (IR) carries about 1.4 crore passengers everyday out of which about1.2 crore passengers travel in unreserved coaches and thus form the bulk of rail userscontributing significantly toward s railways earnings. A railway ticketing systemsoftware namely Scalable Modular Advanced Rail Ticketing System (SMARTS) wasimplemented (1998) over IR on standalone Self Printing Ticketing Machines (SPTMs)for issuing unreserved tickets. While SMARTS contributed towards reducing ticketinventory and provided automated accounting at the station level, the system hadseveral limitations viz., non-availability of the facility for across-the-countercancellation of tickets, increased transportation cost in updating program logic, need

for huge manpower and lack of centralised control over individual booking offices etc.

To overcome these limitations, IR planned (2001-02) a new System - UnreservedTicketing System (UTS) for implementation initially at 23 locations in Delhi area.Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) was the nodal agency for procurementof hardware and development of software that started from August 2002. UTS havesince been replicated in all the zones of Indian Railways.

HOW DOES IT WORK

Long Lines and System Limitations Drive the Need for Change

As a technology partner, CRIS conceptualizes and realizes technology-driven businesstransformation initiatives, through consulting and IT services to Indian Railways.

Before the UTS, unreserved tickets had to be purchased at the railway station fromwhich the passengers were departing and were available for purchase only one hourprior to departure. Unreserved passengers have had little choice but to wait inserpentine queues at congested stations to buy their tickets. This process gave rise to

considerable passenger discomfort, and at the same time posed a number of operationaland administrative problems for Indian Railways including system downtime, lostrevenue, fraud, cumbersome reporting and accounting, and high maintenance costs.

To address these problems and to reduce queues, the SPTM system was introduced.This was a computerized system where a standalone PC was connected to a number of dumb' clients. However, there were a number of significant drawbacks to this systemas it was enabled for a particular station only: Ticket cancellations were limited to theissuing ticket counter of that station; there was no online accounting and ticketing waslimited to only those destinations served by that PC; fare changes and other databaseupdates had to be carried out at each terminal at every station; and transaction data

storage was at station level and was prone to manipulation and physical damage.


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The Unreserved Ticketing System

Determined to remedy these problems, under the directive of the Ministry of Railways,CRIS undertook the creation of a new system for issuing unreserved tickets. The result?The Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS).

UTS is a complete solution providing computerized unreserved tickets to railwaypassengers from dedicated counter terminals, automatic vending machines, and othervenues. UTS also incorporates additional functionalities like cross-counter cancellationof tickets issued from any station, and advance booking of unreserved tickets up to 3days, neither of which were previously possible. It also enables fare enquiries, ensurescorrect accounting of tickets issued, and minimizes the possibility of manipulation andticket misuse. In addition to providing centralized system administration and softwareupgrades, new terminals, users, location,routes,etc.

Complemented with a user-friendly interface, this new system eliminates the highpersonnel resource requirements, high costs of printing, packing and stacking ticketcards, and problems of defacing and forgery.

The New System: Automated Ticketing, High Availability and Data Synchronization

The entire countrywide system of Indian railways is distributed in nine data canterswith each data centre encompassing a number of zones. The Unix-based servers in eachdata canter and station deploy Sybase ASE, Sybase Replication Server and leverage thehigh availability Sybase subsystems. CRIS deploys Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise(ASE) with the High Availability (HA) option to provide database managementcapability at each of its area servers, and SQL Anywhere mobile database for betterinformation management at the thin clients. The ASE HA subsystem is configured toensure near-zero downtime, and SQL Anywhere is a full- featured yet easilyembeddable DBMS.


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The application layer is developed in C++ while Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise(ASE) is used as the database to drive the unreserved ticketing application. The UTSarchitecture has been designed with the approach of "no single point of failure." The

consolidated database resides on an area server, connecting all the stations within thatzone while the remote database, SQL Anywhere, resides on each individual thin clientinstalled at various stations. The thin client is an independent small-footprint serverperforming ticketing operations running a light' Linux operating system. Theseticketing functions and transaction details are stored in its Flash ROM. The SQLAnywhere thin clients update the zone server every few minutes with transactioninformation for cancellation and accounting, increasing the uptime and availability of the system considerably.

For example, suburban ticketing in a large city like Mumbai requires up-to-the secondprecision support to enable time-starved individuals to board trains on time. Also, toreduce the queue length at the booking counters, a new technology of Automatic TicketVending Machines (ATVM) has been introduced. These kiosks are embedded withSybase SQL Anywhere and along with the use of RFID smart cards, enable customersto buy tickets through a user-friendly application supporting regional languages (inaddition to English and Hindi) facilitating the issuance of tickets without any humaninteraction.

The bi-directional synchronization between thin clients and area server is performed bySybase Mobil ink Server. Dynamic information, i.e. transactions done by thin clients, istransferred to a synchronization server where these are stored till they are successfullyreplicated to the area server. Similarly, static information (routes, etc.) to be transferredfrom the area server to the thin clients is also routed through the synchronization serverwhich ensures a successful replication to thin clients. Additionally, every transactionoccurring at a few critical stations identified only in Northern Railway is replicated toan area server using Sybase Replication Server.

The combined Sybase- powered system enables Always Available' operations. This

allows for ticketing operations to continue uninterrupted, even if links to area serversare down, as well as provides database and synchronization infrastructure in areas withextremely poor connectivity.


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UTS: Delivering Value, Security and Consistency

Employing cutting-edge Sybase technology, the Unreserved Ticketing System deliversnon-stop ticketing at remote locations, easy embedding of the ticketing application toDisk-On-Chip, eliminates the possibility of fraud, is an extremely cost-effective solution

for regions with limited or poor connectivity, reduces passenger lines and crowds atbooking offices and stations, and improves the customer experience. With UTS, thedramatic increase in railway traffic in recent years has been accommodated effortlesslywith no additional personnel.

One of the key success factors of this solution is that it allows for continued ticketingservice even in case of un-availability of back-end infrastructure. A second majorsuccessful element is administrative efficiency. The advent of UTS has meant a reliabledelivery system. The previous problems of out of-stock tickets demand estimation, longqueues, and inventory management have been eliminated. Ticket distribution is quick in less than 20 seconds. Also, up to four passengers can now be accommodated on asingle ticket, whereas previously, every passenger was issued an individual card ticket.

The system has streamlined the process and provided greater transparency. Theprocedure for accounting of the printed card tickets and the money collected from theirissue was always a major concern and rigorous inspections were required to preventand detect fraud. Today, this accounting has become a non-issue resolved by adatabase that rests safely on the server. The UTS also has special security features toprevent fraudulent ticket printing.

INTRODUCTION TO ORGANISATION

At the apex level, Railway Board is controlling the activities of UTS through theComputerisation and Information Systems Directorate. At the zonal level, UTSactivities are controlled by Chief Commercial Manager who is assisted by Deputy Chief Commercial Manager, Senior Commercial Manager, Office Superintendents and othersupporting staff. The technical support is provided by Deputy Chief ElectricalEngineer, and Deputy Chief Signal & Telecommunication Engineer.

Development and maintenance activities of the UTS are managed by Canter forRailway Information System (CRIS), which is headed by a Managing Director. TheManaging Director is assisted by Group General Managers, Chief General Managersand General Managers. At the zonal level, CRIS is headed by Chief GeneralManager/General Manager who is assisted by Regional Manager/Managers and Senior

Software Engineers/ Software Engineers.


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RESEARCH METHEDOLOGY

OBJECTIVE:

To study & evaluate the transaction time of issuance & minimize it to large extent.

To provide a breakthrough for advance booking and cancellation of unreserved

tickets from any station

To study the manual operation of existing cancelation procedure & providing

Suggestion for Centralized control for monitoring and auditing

Business Advantage

Providing a seamless and centralized process of purchasing and managingunreserved tickets is now the norm for Indian Railways, thanks to a modernsocketing system backed by Sybase technology.

Key Benefits

Minimizes the transaction time of issuance to less than 20 seconds per ticket Enables advance booking and cancellation of unreserved tickets from any station Improves passenger satisfaction with 24x7 Always Available' ticketing Minimizes possibilities of manipulations and malpractice Enables centralized control for monitoring and auditing Ensures accounting of the tickets sold across all railway zones

Sustains growth in passengers without any growth in staff Simplifies changes in fare structure, destination and other database updates

Sybase Technology

Adaptive Server Enterprise SQL Anywhere Replication Server
http://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/adaptiveserverenterprisehttp://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/adaptiveserverenterprisehttp://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/sqlanywherehttp://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/sqlanywherehttp://www.sybase.com/products/businesscontinuity/replicationserverhttp://www.sybase.com/products/businesscontinuity/replicationserverhttp://www.sybase.com/products/businesscontinuity/replicationserverhttp://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/sqlanywherehttp://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/adaptiveserverenterprise


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RESEARCH DESIGN

TECHNIQUES AND PROCESS FOR UTS

The work load involved in printing, accounting and issuing tickets to this mega segmenthas been a difficult task.

Railways had also introduced electro-mechanical printing devices and also SPTMmachines. But these methods had limitations.

Printed card tickets have been in vogue since the beginning.

Indian railways introduced UTS to improve customer satisfaction, revenue generation,accounting, and reporting capabilities and reduce fraud.

A pilot project was inaugurated in Delhi area in August 2002. Since then UTS has beenextended to 51 important stations of Northern Railway.

UTS has also been extended to all the remaining Zonal Railways by connecting certainselected stations of each zones to the existing server clusters of Northern and EasternRailways.

Five more UTS server clusters will be installed in South Eastern Railway, South CentralRailway, Southern Railway, Central Railway and Western Railway during MAY JUNE 2005

Works in progress in UTS

UTS is planned to be implemented at 500 more stations during this year

Thin Client based UTS successfully implemented on East Central Railway in

March 2005. It is planned to gradually extend thin client based UTS to otherlocations so that ticketing activity can continue even if the communication link orthe server goes down for some time.

Business Continuity for UTS under all circumstances the most importantobjective. Inter-cluster UTS operation migration planned to ensure continuousticketing under all circumstances.


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IMPLIMANTATION OF UTS

There were delays in implementation of UTS in 12 out of the 16 zones. In most of thezones the delays were on account of inordinate delays by CRIS in acquisition of hardware and as a consequence IR was running behind schedule in implementation of UTS . This also indicated that IRs monitoring mechanism was weak.

Automatic Ticket Vending Machines

Apart from manned counters for dispensing tickets, there also automatic ticket vendingmachines (ATVM) that are operated using smart cards and touch screens. Thistechnology was first introduced in Mumbai in Oct2007 and the success led toproliferation to other metropolitan cities. Chennai, Secunderabad and Delhi are theother cities where these machines are currently commissioned. The next major citywhere this service is being offered is Kolkata. The table below shows the number of machines at each of these regions and the average daily sales as in June 2011.

Zone Number of ATVM Daily Avg Earning

Northern Railway 57 29025

Central Railway 166 1129371

Western Railway 115 334573

South Central Railway 64 55765

Southern Railway 61 82630


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DATA COLLECTION

This study is descriptive in nature. This is also a grouping, which includes manyparticular research methodologies and procedures, such as observations, self-reports,and tests.

PRIMARY DATA

Primary data are collected from the zonal office of Indian railways and from publicmeeting to the employees of railway.

SECONDRY DATA

From the internet

From data collected from zonal offices.

And from the journals.

Current Issues

Greater attention to passenger services and safety

Heavily subsidised passenger fares, distorted passenger pricing

Upgradation of the Railway Production units for improved efficiency andproductivity

If passenger returns any ticket lose their 50% money.

SUBMITTED BY:

DEEPAK KUMAR SHAH


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indian railways urs

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