Railways and using some new technology

I am presently in the us and have had an opportunity to travel in the train between two cities- new jersey and Philadelphia .

It's been quite a pleasant journey - when compared to what we undergo while traveling in the Indian trains - not because of customer service but because of the interesting usage of technology

1. One can book tickets online and take printouts of the tickets ( yes we can also do that in the irctc.in website- though I don't think that's possible in the metro

2. You are gauranteed a seat on the train.. And I saw some of the train officials helping people find a seat

3. The train conductors basically have a bar code reader which they use to check validity of the tickets - quite neat actually. This is tied into the central server so that they can find out if seats are overbooked etc etc.

I really like point no 3-- it makes life al much easier for conductors , unlike the indian railways where they use big sheets of paper

The only place I saw something like this in India in the services sector was with the traffic police in bangalore - immediate stopping, checking for open tickets and giving you a receipt

These are great cost saving ideas - huge way of trying to integrate into the newer technologies

It's not that the Indian railways is not doing such things - one doesn't need to carry a printout anymore - one can show the SMS or a digital ticket on the laptop or phone

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