Rail budget 2015: Now book your train tickets 120 days in advance

In order to make travel on the Indian Railways a happy experience, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today introduced a slew of measures while presenting his maiden Rail Budget in the Lok Sabha. Chief among these measures were addressing the problem of unreserved seats and ensuring that tickets can now be booked 120 days in advance as opposed to the current 60-day window.

The Indian Railways is also introducing ‘Operation Five Minutes’ to ensure that a passenger travelling unreserved can purchase a ticket within five minutes. Provision of modified ‘hot-buttons’, coin vending machines and ‘single destination teller’ windows will drastically reduce the transaction time.

For the differently-abled travellers, a special initiative is being launched whereby they can purchase concessional e-tickets after one-time registration. The Railways will also move towards crediting all refunds through the banking system.

The Railways has already iniatied a pilot project of issuing unreserved tickets on smart phones. This facility will be extended to all stations.

Automatic ticket vending machines with smart cards and currency options have also been installed at many stations. It is proposed to proliferate this further and also to introduce debit card operated machines.

Moreover, an  “SMS Alert” service to inform passengers in advance about the updated arrival/departure time of trains at starting or destination stations, will be initiated.  Similarly SMS alert would be sent 15/30 minutes in advance of arrival of the train at the destination.

Also, Hand-held Travelling Ticket Examiners (TTEs), which can be used for verification of passengers and downloading charts, will be started This system will help the Railways to move towards paperless ticketing and charting and expedite finalization of refund claims apart from saving of paper.