Tag Archive for 'railway stations'

Laloo wasn’t lying…(SMS platform tickets, Cyber Cafes..)

Published on May 9, 2008 in Reform/Infrastructure and Travel. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Laloo (the present Railway’s Minister) promised that railway stations across the country would be getting a makeover in the coming years. And things really do seem to be changing.

I recently traveled from Bangalore to Delhi. There were lots of small improvements everywhere: train timings were on television screens, you could check your email in an internet cafe, you could check the status of your reservation on a do-it-yourself touchscreen display, the ticketing counter was pleasant looking and modern, there were ATMs to withdraw cash etc. But the most innovative thing was that you could buy platform tickets via SMS! The way it works is that you SMS a particular number and you get an SMS back which serves as the electronic platform ticket. Wow!

Platform SMS

The posh (by Indian standards at least) looking ticketing counters…
Bangalore Station Ticketing Window

Bangalore Railway’s station’s Internet Cafe. You need a government issued identification like a driving license (which is duly noted down) to browse the Internet. The usual government paranoia… :-(

Also notice that the Internet Cafe is in collaboration with Tata Indicom (a private telecom company). This itself indicates a healthy trend in the Indian Railways of outsourcing non-core functions to private parties for enhanced efficiency. If the railways had setup their own Internet Cafes pretty soon the computers would fall into disrepair, internet connections would be unreliable, cafes would start closing really early… (you get my drift) :-) .

Bangalore Railways Station Internet Cafe

Lalu wants world class railway stations in India

Published on July 8, 2007 in Opinion, Commentary & Reviews, Reform/Infrastructure and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

The Indian Railways wants to upgrade the New Delhi station (followed by others) to world class standards. Hon’ble Railway Minister Lalu Prasad announced this sometime ago and the railways seems to be moving ahead. An excerpt from the Financial Express

Swanky railway stations without the hustle and bustle and chaos that characterises them today. That’s what the railway ministry hopes to achieve some time in the near future, beginning with the New Delhi railway station. The proposal was announced by railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav last year, when he promised upgradation of 16 major stations and making them “truly world class”.

The ministry’s agenda has got a big boost with the Prime Minister’s Committee on Infrastructure (CoI) in June this year, clearing the modernisation of the New Delhi station by 2010, just in time for the wave of sports aficionados that will visit the national capital for the Commonwealth Games.

That fact that we really have far to go hit me when I went to the Victoria railway station in London yesterday. Its a fantastic railway station and will even put a lot of airports around the world to shame. I hope Lalu Prasad has sent some officials to check out the railway stations in the UK/Europe. I’m all in favour of opening the minds of our head-in-the-sand babus by sending them on foreign “study” tours. Though there is more tourism and less “study” in these tours I think its still worth it.

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Compare with the ticket counters in any Mumbai station…

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