In a massive development, the Railways’ UTS app for booking unreserved tickets is set to go live from 1 November. Once it goes live, the users will be able to book unreserved rail tickets online. This is bound to make rail journey for those travelling on unreserved tickets far more comfortable and convenient. The scheme is bound to make long queues at railway stations a thing of the past, as the users of the UTS app will be able to book unreserved train tickets, pan India. The app was launched 4 years ago but failed to gather momentum at that time, except in Mumbai, where it was first launched because a large number of people travel in locals.
The app is also available to those who want to travel long distance. The app is already quite popular and there are around 45 lakh registered users of this app with around 87,000+ tickets being sold everyday. This speaks volumes about the phenomenal success of this app. A passenger needs to be around 25-30 meters away from the station to avail the application and is allowed to book only four tickets at a time via the app. As of now, the railways have implemented this scheme in 15 of its zones. It hasn’t been implemented in the North-east Frontier Railway and West Central Railway being the remaining two zones.
A senior railways official said, “We have been trying to engage people to encourage them to use the UTS mobile application. The numbers are growing and we are hopeful that once passengers understand the benefits of this app, they will buy their tickets online. With certain zones not being a part of the app, a lot of passengers were unable to use it. Railway stations intersecting these zones were left out of the app, from 1 November, it will be available pan India.”
This app is going to be a complete package. In addition to the unreserved tickets, users can also book platform and monthly passes. The railways earns around Rs 45 lakh per day through the online sale of such unreserved tickets. Now, these tickets going online is going to be a huge boost, as far as online reservation of rail tickets is concerned.
This is yet another step by the railways to make rail journey more comfortable and convenient. This will also decrease the lingering queues outside of the railway stations, making them traveller friendly. The railway ministry under the Modi government is working round the clock, in areas that had long been ignored. It is truly going to make the Indian railways, a world class mode of public transportation.
