Optimizing Indian National Railways System using IT

The new USSD and SMS based system is likely to fail because of two reasons. It is likely that the TG of railways people with no internet on phone are going to find it highly cumbersome to adopt the complexities of OTP and MMID etc.

More ever the two new systems are likely to tax and load the already loaded databases and servers with additional applications accessing and overall success in all the modes will suffer.

The various well intentioned steps of IRCTC at best are addressing the problem at the symptom level and not going to the root cause.

One simple way of solving accessibility is by having more manual counters. With so much unemployment and cheap labor this step may sound traditional but feasible.

Another thing attempting the root of problem is increasing the capacity of the Transport system which is bursting at its seams.

More AC coaches and overall more sleeper coaches will make more tickets available to more people through existing channels and will also curb out black marketing in which railways officials are in collusion.

A scientific way to find out about more trains and more AC coaches scientifically designing the Indian railways is through Big Data and data mining.

Store data and find the number of people trying online for reservation and failing or the average RAC and WL numbers and using intelligent algorithms find out about profitable and optimal expansion of capacity and get good word of mouth from customers.

Also having more AC coaches will only increase the overall revenue of Railways. Many people use Road and Airway as a last resort who can be served by the Railways.

Also security at Railway stations and in trains is a major concern to be addressed in addition to safety.

Hope someone important read this.