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a to b route planning for indian railways

Written by on June 16th, 2006 in Proposals 2006

What NEED does this meet?

need for travellers and citizens in rapidly deveoping economy to get best use from transport system.

What is the APPROACH?

current railway website is indexed by train number and difficult to navigate. A route based service has a distinct benefit.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

far quicker determination of journeys. better resource for businesses.

What is the COMPETITION?

depends on upgrade to india railways website.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

quite straightforward to applying a route planning system. network appears limited and data is clearly scrappable.

6 Comments

  1. Michael Evans says:

    [Initial proposal typed on a borrowed GPRS device hence brevity and lack of capitals].

    >What is the COMPETITION?
    >depends on upgrade to india railways website

    Since submitting this proposal I have found such an option on the Indian Railways website here which does A to B journey planning: http://www.indianrail.gov.in/inet_srcdest_names.html
    However it is not very obvious (no link off home page, and link found at bottom of ‘Trains between important stations’ page) – quite easily missable.

    I will send a suggestion to add the link off the home page, as it is the obvious way to wish to find a train.

    It is worth noting, that the difference with say UK rail (with hourly or half hourly departures between key cities) is that there are generally few trains per day between major cities – due to the large distances separating them; mostly configured as sleeper trains. A regular rail traveller would probably become accustomed to the major connections and the train service numbers / fixed departure times – and not have such a need for adhoc planning. With fewer alternatives, and long journey times it is probably not worth trying for different connections or complicated trips (having performed the task manually using a printed All India Railway timetable I didn’t find any alternatives to principal trains, for trips I was making). However it may become more of a concern in future, with expansion of transport.

  2. forgethis says:

    As far as I can tell, there is still no way of generating a ‘real’ A to B plan..

    for example, to get from Goa to Guwahati… the site returns no results..

    the ideal planner would tell me that i should take train A from Goa to Kolkata and train B from kolkata to Guwahati

  5. vivek says:

    http://www.indiantrains.org/

    I have not seen such a good site which has so many features in a single page . The better way to search Indian trains looks great and it open fast, no pop-up, user friendly. every information in a single page . this concept is good and some of the features like calendar, train running day has not come in a single website in this reviews. the most important features i have seen in this site that if the user does not know the station code then also he can see all the trains and it is only website which have a drop menu box for the important station from where you can choose the station name and also it has a date calendar from you can choose the date and it show the running day of the train so that you can know which day of the week this train is running. the other most important feature i have seen in this website that it show the train which does not have the reservation coach for the benefit of the user and they are showing the passenger train also which is also not available in any website.

  6. rimi says:

    hey guys i found a new railways website … check out the Indian Railways Passenger Reservation Enquiry Website

    http://www.bharatrail.net

    i think its even better than the official one .
    i found the site neat, cool and fast to use …
    check it out urself ..

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