Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday launched the much-awaited RailOne app, which consolidates all railway passenger services — including an upgraded passenger reservation system, unreserved ticketing, and catering — into an ‘all-in-one’ platform.
Through the app, touted as the Railways’ ‘Super App’, the Centre for Railway Information Systems (Cris) looks to sort out legacy issues of siloed passenger services.
‘The app is available for download on Android Play Store and iOS App Store. It integrates all the passenger services such as Unreserved & platform tickets with 3 per cent discount, Live train tracking, Grievance redressal, E-catering, Porter booking, and Last-mile taxi,’ the ministry of railways said.
The passenger reservation system (PRS) within RailOne will continue to be operated by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) as the app has been authorised by the listed company as an authorised partner like other travel platforms.
Vaishnaw, who inaugurated the app at Cris’ 40th Foundation Day, said that the Railways IT backbone needs to focus on cybersecurity even more and level up to the highest global standards, especially at the level of the router, which is seen as one of the most vulnerable areas.
The app will support all existing credentials from multiple apps and will eliminate the need to have several apps for different services.
The Railways is aiming to also significantly increase its backend data-handling capacity — the modern PRS will be agile, multilingual, and scalable to handle 10 times the current load. It will be capable of 0.15 million ticket bookings, and 0.4 million enquiries per minute, the ministry said.
The system will also have advanced functionalities for seat choice and fare calendar, and integrated options for Divyangjan, students, and patients, etc.