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 centralize the purchase and management of unreserved tickets. The Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), a one-of-a-kind modern system, was developed and implemented by CRIS for Indian Railways. UTS are a state-of-the-art computerized unreserved ticketing mechanism providing an improved customer ticketing experience and seamless process. This implementation has helped increase operational efficiency and has also enhanced customer service tremendously. Indian Railways did not have any structured mechanism for resolving delays on the part 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 rendered the system prone to misuse and frauds. The system design did not comprehensively incorporate all the business rules and had various deficiencies, which not only cause operational constraints but also warranted manual intervention leading to increased security risks and inconvenience to passengers.

REVIEW OF LITRATURE

Indian Railways (IR) carries about 1.4 crore passengers everyday out of which about 1.2 crore passengers travel in unreserved coaches and thus form the bulk of rail users contributing significantly towards railways earnings. A railway ticketing system software namely Scalable Modular Advanced Rail Ticketing System (SMARTS) was implemented (1998) over IR on standalone Self Printing Ticketing Machines (SPTMs) for issuing unreserved tickets. While SMARTS contributed towards reducing ticket inventory and provided automated accounting at the station level, the system had several limitations viz., non-availability of the facility for across-the-counter cancellation 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 - Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) for implementation initially at 23 locations in Delhi area. Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) was the nodal agency for procurement of hardware and development of software that started from August 2002. UTS have since 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 business transformation initiatives, through consulting and IT services to Indian Railways. Before the UTS, unreserved tickets had to be purchased at the railway station from which the passengers were departing and were available for purchase only one hour prior to departure. Unreserved passengers have had little choice but to wait in serpentine 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 operational and administrative problems for Indian Railways including system downtime, lost revenue, 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 system as it was enabled for a particular station only: Ticket cancellations were limited to the issuing ticket counter of that station; there was no online accounting and ticketing was limited to only those destinations served by that PC; fare changes and other database updates 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.

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 railway passengers from dedicated counter terminals, automatic vending machines, and other venues. UTS also incorporates additional functionalities like cross-counter cancellation of tickets issued from any station, and advance booking of unreserved tickets up to 3 days, neither of which were previously possible. It also enables fare enquiries, ensures correct accounting of tickets issued, and minimizes the possibility of manipulation and ticket misuse. In addition to providing centralized system administration and software upgrades, new terminals, users, location,routes,etc. Complemented with a user-friendly interface, this new system eliminates the high personnel resource requirements, high costs of printing, packing and stacking ticket cards, 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 canters with each data centre encompassing a number of zones. The Unix-based servers in each data canter and station deploy Sybase ASE, Sybase Replication Server and leverage the high availability Sybase subsystems. CRIS deploys Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) with the High Availability (HA) option to provide database management capability at each of its area servers, and SQL Anywhere mobile database for better information management at the thin clients. The ASE HA subsystem is configured to ensure near-zero downtime, and SQL Anywhere is a full- featured yet easily embeddable DBMS.

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 UTS architecture 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 that zone while the remote database, SQL Anywhere, resides on each individual thin client installed at various stations. The thin client is an independent small-footprint server performing ticketing operations running a light' Linux operating system. These ticketing functions and transaction details are stored in its Flash ROM. The SQL Anywhere thin clients update the zone server every few minutes with transaction information 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 second precision support to enable time-starved individuals to board trains on time. Also, to reduce the queue length at the booking counters, a new technology of Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM) has been introduced. These kiosks are embedded with Sybase SQL Anywhere and along with the use of RFID smart cards, enable customers to buy tickets through a user-friendly application supporting regional languages (in addition to English and Hindi) facilitating the issuance of tickets without any human interaction.

The bi-directional synchronization between thin clients and area server is performed by Sybase Mobil ink Server. Dynamic information, i.e. transactions done by thin clients, is transferred to a synchronization server where these are stored till they are successfully replicated to the area server. Similarly, static information (routes, etc.) to be transferred from the area server to the thin clients is also routed through the synchronization server which ensures a successful replication to thin clients. Additionally, every transaction occurring at a few critical stations identified only in Northern Railway is replicated to an 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 servers are down, as well as provides database and synchronization infrastructure in areas with extremely poor connectivity.

UTS: Delivering Value, Security and Consistency Employing cutting-edge Sybase technology, the Unreserved Ticketing System delivers non-stop ticketing at remote locations, easy embedding of the ticketing application to Disk-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 at booking offices and stations, and improves the customer experience. With UTS, the dramatic increase in railway traffic in recent years has been accommodated effortlessly with no additional personnel.

One of the key success factors of this solution is that it allows for continued ticketing service even in case of un-availability of back-end infrastructure. A second major successful element is administrative efficiency. The advent of UTS has meant a reliable delivery system. The previous problems of out of-stock tickets demand estimation, long queues, 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 a single ticket, whereas previously, every passenger was issued an individual card ticket.

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

INTRODUCTION TO ORGANISATION

At the apex level, Railway Board is controlling the activities of UTS through the Computerisation and Information Systems Directorate. At the zonal level, UTS activities are controlled by Chief Commercial Manager who is assisted by Deputy Chief Commercial Manager, Senior Commercial Manager, Office Superintendents and other supporting staff. The technical support is provided by Deputy Chief Electrical Engineer, and Deputy Chief Signal & Telecommunication Engineer. Development and maintenance activities of the UTS are managed by Canter for Railway Information System (CRIS), which is headed by a Managing Director. The Managing Director is assisted by Group General Managers, Chief General Managers and General Managers. At the zonal level, CRIS is headed by Chief General Manager/General Manager who is assisted by Regional Manager/Managers and Senior Software Engineers/ Software Engineers.

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 managing unreserved tickets is now the norm for Indian Railways, thanks to a modern socketing 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

RESEARCH DESIGN

TECHNIQUES AND PROCESS FOR UTS

The work load involved in printing, accounting and issuing tickets to this mega segment has been a difficult task. Railways had also introduced electro-mechanical printing devices and also SPTM machines. 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 been extended to 51 important stations of Northern Railway. UTS has also been extended to all the remaining Zonal Railways by connecting certain selected stations of each zones to the existing server clusters of Northern and Eastern Railways. Five more UTS server clusters will be installed in South Eastern Railway, South Central Railway, 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 other locations so that ticketing activity can continue even if the communication link or the server goes down for some time. Business Continuity for UTS under all circumstances the most important objective. Inter-cluster UTS operation migration planned to ensure continuous ticketing under all circumstances.

IMPLIMANTATION OF UTS
There were delays in implementation of UTS in 12 out of the 16 zones. In most of the zones 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 vending machines (ATVM) that are operated using smart cards and touch screens. This technology was first introduced in Mumbai in Oct2007 and the success led to proliferation to other metropolitan cities. Chennai, Secunderabad and Delhi are the other cities where these machines are currently commissioned. The next major city where 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 Northern Railway Central Railway Western Railway South Central Railway Southern Railway

Number of ATVM 57 166 115 64 61

Daily Avg Earning 29025 1129371 334573 55765 82630

DATA COLLECTION
This study is descriptive in nature. This is also a grouping, which includes many particular 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 public meeting 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 and productivity If passenger returns any ticket lose their 50% money.

SUBMITTED BY: DEEPAK KUMAR SHAH