Indian Railway Modernization Case Analysis

Modernization of passenger reservation system: Indian Railways’ dilemma

Case Analysis of Modernization of Passenger Reservation System

BY

Sunil Kumar Ray Roll No. 2218624

Parthasarathy V V Roll No. 2218912

Venu Babu V Roll No. 2218915

Rajesh Bhagwan Kondle Roll No. 2218607

Objective

How CRIS can modernize the Present passenger reservation system (PRS) smoothly without any hitches for the passengers and Indian railway.

Key observations of the case

1. Present passenger reservation system is time tested and very reliable. It handles over 1 million transactions per day.

2. The original PRS software was developed in FORTRAN in 1985. The original PRS went through three versions. Thereafter, in 1997, the software was largely rewritten in C by CRIS. So the Indian Railway has changed the PRS earlier too but in a phased manner to make sure system gets enough time to stabilize with each change and does not impact existing business.

3. It took around 14 years to roll out all India implementation for current PRS from 1985 to 1999.

4. On average the system collects over Rupees 200 million in daily revenue.

5. Average uptime of the system is around 99.2% and average transaction latency is less than 3 seconds.

6. PRS has complex business logic. Complexity arises from the combination of handling types of trains 8, types of quotas 40, types of classes 9, types of concessions 199, and types of coaches (Railway Carriages) 123.

7. Indian railway handles around 16 million passengers per day in over 9500 passenger trains. Nearly 1 million passengers per day get their accommodation reserved through the PRS.

8. As of now only 15% of journeys are undertaken using reserved accommodation, it still adds up to over 1 million transactions per day on the...