Train tickets sold out online in mins
The study, conducted by the Passenger Marketing Cell, revealed that bookings touched the waitlist mark in a record two minutes after they opened at 8am for the Pandyan Express. Bookings also touched the RAC or waitlist mark in less than 10 minutes for the Nellai Express, Pothigai Express, Pearl City Express, Ananthapuri Express, Rockfort Express, Niligiri Express and Cheran Express. The only exception was the Kannya Kumari Express - it took 16 minutes for the tickets to get sold out.
Backed by a similar experience last year, Southern Railway studied the pattern of bookings and found that 65% of tickets were booked online and the rest through the 95 passenger reservation (PRS) counters spread over Chennai, Coimbatore, Coimbatore, Dindigul, Erode, Madurai, Trichy, Rajapalayam, Rameswaram, Sivakasi, Tirunelveli, Thiruvananthapuram, Tuticorin and other centres.
The PRS system is capable of processing 20 to 30 successful transactions per second. This means that in one minute 1,200 to 1,800 transactions can be successfully completed, with reservations of around 2,000 persons. The total number of berths available for a day on popular trains is approximately 10,000 berths. At the current speed of processing, the time taken for 10,000 successful transactions would be just 8.33 minutes, according to an assessment made by Southern Railway officials.
Officials have also ruled out the popular belief that the berths were cornered by agents of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), who book online. "It was found that the total number of bookimgs done by these agents for berths in Nellai, Pandiyan, Kanyakumari, Ananthapuri and RockFort were only 80. However, the total numbers of bookings done on the internet for the five trains were 841 on the same day."
The study also revealed that 95% of online bookings were done by individuals, not agents. The trend was all-India, and not peculiar to the zone, a press release pointed out.
