The railways are going high tech slowly! Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu launched 2 mobile apps for passengers and railways officials, through a remote controlled video conference between the Rail Bhawan and New Delhi Station. Not just that, Prabhu said that the railways will also sign an MoU between the Railways Department of CRIS and ISRO for using Geospatial and satellite technology for different railways operations. Here’s the lowdown: Utsonmobile: The paperless unreserved ticketing mobile app The paperless unreserved ticketing mobile app, called ‘Utsonmobile’ has been developed by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) for Android and Windows platform, in order to eliminate the need for printing unreserved tickets at ATVMs in stations. Between the suburban areas of Chennai and Mumbai Western Railway sections, the app claims to cover 125 stations and a distance of 295 kms. The Ministry said that 1,600 tickets were being booked through the app daily. The New Delhi-Palwal section from the Northern Railways will add 11 stations and 57 kms of distance. The railways have marked GPS coordinates of railways tracks with a 20 meter geo-fencing area, where no tickets will be able to be booked, on the New Delhi-Palwal section. The paperless unreserved ticketing will be extended to the New Delhi-Palwal section of the Northern Railways and will extend to other suburban sections of the Eastern Railways, South Eastern Railways and South Central Railways soon. The app will provide alerts and tickets can be paid for using the ‘Railway Wallet’. Post booking, the user will get…
