Chennai: Indian Railways reduced the advance reservation of trains from 120 days to 60 days. The move will come into effect from November 1.
The new rule by Indian Railways will come into effect from November 1, 2024, sources told.
It is important to note that new rules for adavnce train ticket booking will not impact the already booked tickets.
The sources added that the changes have been made considering that people could book tickets and plan travel much in advance, but in case any cancellation of trains, passengers faced problems.
Meanwhile, Indian Railways is making significant strides in incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance its systems and processes.
The organisation has already implemented Al-enabled cameras for monitoring linen and food quality, and now it has deployed an Al model to optimize train occupancy. According to railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, “One Al model we used for checking the occupancy of trains had led to over 30% increase in the rate of confirmed tickets.”
The Al model works by analyzing data and predicting seat availability after the reservation chart is prepared four hours before a train’s departure. This allows the system to allocate seats to passengers on the waiting list more efficiently.
Vaishnaw told ET, “The Al model is able to study data and predict availability of seats, leading to greater confirmations.”
The railways has moved away from the traditional approach of evenly distributing seats per station and now uses Al to identify stations with higher demand and adjusts the allocation accordingly.