IT Infrastructure of Indian Railways

Introduction

Indian Railways is the world’s second-largest railway.

It has –

· 6,853 stations

· 63,028 kilometers of track

· 37,840 passenger coaches

· 222,147 freight cars

· 4.83 Billion passengers traveling by it every year

· 492 Million tons of freight are transported every year

· 11 Million passengers climb aboard one of 8,520 trains each day

· 550,000 have reserved accommodations

Their journeys can start in any part of India and end in any other part, with travel times as long as 48 hours and distances up to several thousand kilometers.

Introducing CRIS

The organization related to the Computerization aspects of the Indian Railways is – Centre for Railway Information Systems ( CRIS ).

Below are a few details about CRIS –

· Established in 1986 by the Ministry of Railways

· Started Operations in July 1987

· Autonomous organization headed by Managing Director



The Need for CRIS

· Avoid duplication of efforts by the individual Railways

· Ensure standardization of computer hardware and software on the Railways

· Undertake design and development of major applications on Railways requiring higher levels of
expertise, faster decision making and system wide applicability

· Insulate the organization from the day to day working of the Railways so that its objectives are not
lost sight of

· The need for a combined effort of Railways and Computer Specialists, considered best suited for
the development of the computer applications on Railways

· Need for development of expertise in highly specialized fields like Operation Research, Simulation,
Expert System, CAD/CAM, Process Control etc

· Need for greater flexibility to keep pace with the fast changing technology


Major Projects Undertaken by CRIS


Some of the major projects undertaken by CRIS are as below -

· Passenger Reservation System (PRS)

· National Train Enquiry System (NTES)

· Alpha Migration

· Internet Enquiries

· Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS)


Details of Projects Undertaken by CRIS

· Passenger Reservation System (PRS)

PRS started in 1985 as a pilot project in New Delhi. The avowed objective was to provide reserved accommodation on any train from any counter preparation of train charts and accountal of the money collected.

When initial pilot project was implemented at Delhi, the software (referred to as version I) had a number of limitations. These were mainly removed in next version i.e. version II implemented in 1987.With the addition of new locations and many redefinitions needed the new version III evolved in 1990.Even the version III of the earlier software called Impress fell far short of the growing expectations of the traveling public and the need was felt to have a software which has the capabilities of providing the Networking of the five independent PRS nodes namely Secunderabad, Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai and Chennai

On 18^th April 1999, with the networking of Chennai PRS, all the five PRS namely Secunderabad, New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai were finally networked together. Now anywhere to anywhere reserved ticketing became a possibility on any PRS booking terminal.

In order to facilitate the availability, PNR status and other journey planning information to the common public various interfaces like the Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) on the telephone, Touch Screens at selective locations, RAPID, DISPLAY, Passenger Operated Enquiry Terminals (POET) and Daily Press Availability Reports through newspapers have been provided.

· National Train Enquiry System (NTES)

National Train Enquiry System is a reliable centralized information system which provides up-to-date and accurate information to the passengers regarding -

o Arrival/ Departure of passenger trains including Expected time of arrival (ETA) of trains

o Platform berthing of passenger trains

o Journey Planning (presently SMART package)

o Facilities available at stations (presently GLOBAL ENQUIRY package)

o Railway Rules (presently GLOBAL ENQUIRY package).

This information is made available to the user through Display Boards, Interactive Voice Response System, Public Address System, Face to Face Enquiry, CCTV and it is proposed to make it available on the internet in the next phase. The beta version of NTES inquiries on internet is available. The above information is collected from stations, control offices and other database administrators.

The project started as a pilot project and was implemented in Aug. 1998. In the phase II, the software has networked all 5 servers running the NTES application. It now runs on Alpha server machine and under UNIX using Sybase as the RDBMS. NTES phase II is successfully running at all five PRS sites.

· Alpha Migration

One of CRIS’s key technical achievements is a sophisticated reservation and ticketing application called Country-Wide Network for Enhanced Reservation and Ticketing (CONCERT).

The primary challenge for CRIS is to provide an efficient passenger service by ensuring maximum uptime for its reservation/ticketing and inquiry application. The Railway must prepare charts that map passengers with their seats, and must post these charts outside each coach. CONCERT software enables the preparation of skeleton charts in advance for each train for the next three journey days.

Indian Railway’s current CONCERT application represents a steady progression of using the latest technologies available. In the mid-1980s, Indian Railways first computerized its reserved ticketing operation on VAX™ systems running VMS™. This was done from five regional passenger reservation centers, each of which was a stand-alone site with its own local database. During the mid- to late 1990s, CRIS introduced CONCERT, which linked the five passenger reservation centres so that reserved tickets from any station of Indian Railways could be issued to any other station from a single window.

The entire CONCERT application since its inception had been hosted on 5 VAX-VMS clusters located at the five PRS sites New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Secunderabad.

With the tremendous growth of PRS terminals all over the country and the extra load of various interface software such as Internet enquiries, the overall load on the backend PRS system had increased manifold.

A need was felt to move the existing application from the VAX-VMS servers to Alpha VMS servers. The entire migration from the existing VAX VMS to Alpha VMS was done in a record time frame. The new platform also delivers significant cost savings and Time saving another significant benefit of Indian Railway’s state-of-the-art IT platform.

· Internet Enquiries

Since Railways is the most commonly used mode of transport by common people in India, information regarding Journey planning, Fare Enquiries, PNR status, Accommodation availability and like enquiries are of utmost importance to the common public.

Following methods were available to access this information –

o Enquiry Counters at Railway Stations

o Press availability reports published in the daily newspaper

o Announcements in TV and Radios etc.

o IVRS system on Telephones

There were various shortcomings in the above methods like:

o Standing in long queues

o Old Information

o Congested Telephone lines

CRIS has developed and deployed the Indian Railway’s web Site at Delhi for the purpose of information/dissemination to general public since February 2000, with a view towards overcoming the many shortcomings mentioned above.

On 28^th February 2000, all the common enquiries like Trains between a given pair of stations, reservation availability, PNR status, Fare, Train schedule and station codes were made available to the common public through the Internet. It has in a very short span of time become one of the most popular web sites in India, with peak daily hits of the order of 1.7 million hits per day.

The information on the web sites has also been made available through SMS service on mobile phones, all over India.

· Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS)

More than 1.2 crore Rail passengers travel in unreserved coaches and trains every day and thus form the bulk of rail users. For this category of passengers Railways have introduced the facility of Computerized Unreserved Ticketing System was initially provided at 10 stations of Delhi area in the first stage as a pilot project on 15 August 2002 . Another 13 stations of Delhi area were provided with UTS counters in the second stage on 2 ^nd Oct, 2002. It has since been extended in an integrated manner to more than 180 stations all over the country. UTS system has been planned to take over the Printed Card Tickets or tickets issued by self Printing Ticket Machines gradually.

UTS will provide the facility to purchase Unreserved Ticket 3 days in advance of the date of journey. A passenger can buy a ticket for any destination from the UTS counter for all such destinations which are served by that station. The cancellation of tickets has also been simplified. Passengers can cancel their tickets one day in advance of the journey from any station provided with a UTS counter. On the day of journey, the ticket can be cancelled from station from which the journey was to commence.

Indian Railway is constantly looking for new ideas to simplify and streamline procedures for the convenience of passengers. In this endeavor they have introduced several path breaking technologies on the Railway system over the years.

These technical innovations have included the computerization of reserved passenger tickets amongst several other facilities for passengers. As we introduce new facilities on the railway system, we are tempted to take a peek into the past. The legacy of the 150 years of railways in India is not only filled by the memories of the steam run trains puffing over the countryside, it is also of cardboard tickets, one for the fare and the other for reservation and of course, the memories of sending telegrams for return reservation to the station master from where one was to begin the return journey. With the introduction of the computerization of reserved tickets, these memories have been relegated to the past.

With the introduction of this system, the Railways will also benefit in several ways.

The benefits are as below –

o Keeping pace with the latest technology

o Encouraging passengers to purchase their tickets in advance

o To have online accountal of tickets sales

o To have a rational analysis of the demand of passengers on various routes in advance, so as to augment trains as per requirement

Advantages –

o Reduced queue length

o Enable advance planning of unreserved journey

o Reduced crowds at booking offices and stations, making ticket purchase more comfortable

o Allow Indian Railways to plan extra trains and coaches as per trend of sales registered in the system

o Unreserved itinerary planning became possible as tickets were now available from any station to any other station

Companies Involved in Computerization of the Indian Railways

The Two companies that have played a major role in the computerization of Indian Railways are –

· CMC LTD

· Hewlett Packard

Details of the Work Done by the Companies

· CMC LTD

In 1985, CMC developed IMPRESS, the railway reservation system based online transaction processing (OLTP), for the Indian Railways, which has been successfully operating it since 1987. Since then, however, the system has undergone a major change for networking all nodes in the railway network. The current software is CONCERT, implemented by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS).

The impact of IMPRESS / CONCERT on the system's users as well as on the Indian Railways has been tremendous. The benefits include substantial savings in transportation costs and in reservation time, telescopic fare benefits for cluster journeys, reduced malpractice and, above all, a modern, efficient and convenient system.

For the Railways, there is substantial reduction in cost per ticket issued, manpower savings (a 40 per cent increase in transactions handled per day), savings in space required, less strenuous work, higher productivity and fewer errors in fare computation, concession calculations, etc.

IMPRESS is being enhanced proactively, using state-of-the-art relational database management systems on open systems. The enhanced IMPRESS is built around an RDBMS core and supports a full client-server architecture.

The application has been designed as an open distribution system, so that the data and transaction volume can be segregated between multiple host sites. Networking is an inherent feature of the application.

The IMPRESS software can support both graphic user interface (GUI) and character-based terminals, which act as front-ends installed at the booking counters to cater to passenger requests.

This software conforms to open standards. Hence, it can be interfaced to other applications like airline reservation systems, hotel reservation systems, etc., which are also based on open standards.

The IMPRESS software is 'parametric' in terms of data and business rules, for fare computation, refund rules, cancellation, break journey rules, etc. Here, business rules are also kept as data items in the back-end repository instead of being part of the application logic. Therefore, the system can absorb changes in business rules immediately, without having to regenerate the object code.

The application is secured against intrusion by two-level user authentications as the topmost guard. Below it, the data is secured from external access through multiple-level privileges. A data encryption facility is available across the WAN to prevent hacking.

· Hewlett Packard

Indian Railways runs state-of-the-art passenger reservation system on HP OpenVMS AlphaServer systems.

Quoting Dr. Rajesh Narang, Chief System Manager – CRIS

” Because OpenVMS allows mixed clustering, we were able to bring on one AlphaServer at a time, which made the upgrade very easy and reduced our risk of downtime. Since moving from VAX to Alpha, we have not experienced a single disk failure. ”

The above quote by Dr Narang best explains the crucial role played by the HP servers in running the well oiled machinery & my favorite Digital Enterprise – The Indian Railway

Summing Up

It was certainly a fascinating experience trying to relate my academic understanding of a Digital Enterprise to a real world Digital Enterprise of the magnitude & complexity of the Indian Railways.

This study undertaken has exposed me to not just the technology behind the Digital Enterprise but also to the thought behind a Digital Enterprise.

Understanding a digital enterprise like the Indian Railways has been a humbling experience as I have realized the amount of work that has gone into making possible the amenities to me that I take for granted as a citizen.

Kudos! to CRIS and Ministry of Railways in being so pro-active to create a Digital Enterprise as complex and efficient as the Indian Railways.

References:

· Website of CMC Ltd

· Website of Indian Railways

· Material Available on CRIS on the Internet