To facilitate easier and faster booking, IRCTC upgraded e-ticketing website. Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal yesterday launched the upgraded website and mobile application, Rail Connect.

After launching the website, the minister said that nearly 40,000 people can log in to the revamped website simultaneously.

At present, the IRCTC website is used by more than six crore users. Around 83 per cent of reserved tickets are booked online with around 8 lakh tickets per day.

The upgraded website and mobile application will be effective from January 1. The website is now more user-friendly so that passengers can book tickets easily without depending on agents.

The Railways wants to avoid the interference of fake agents in the ticket booking process, hence, it upgraded the website for the convenience of users.

The new IRCTC website has many user-friendly features to improve the booking experience of users:

• The new website has many customized features like booking of meals, hotels, retiring rooms etc. Thus ticket booking is integrated with accommodation booking.
• It offers suggestions to users using Artificial Intelligence based on their travel history and pattern.
• Users can easily check their refund status and cancellations.
• By submitting relevant details, users can book regular or favourite journeys.
• Train search and selection process is simplified to save the time of passengers.
• Also, users can view information, such as the availability of seats for all classes and their fares for all trains at a glance.
• The newly introduced cache system helps avoid delays in loading availability status. Users can check the probability of confirmation for waitlisted tickets on the same page. They can also check the availability of seats for other dates on the same page.
• Prompts are made available to ease the booking process even for novice computer users.
• The built-in features of the website have captchas to improve cybersecurity.
• Users can view delays in journeys at the payment page.

Image by Vijaya narasimha from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/photos/indian-railway-dharwad-india-train-271020/