IRCTC is launching new website, it will make Tatkal bookings faster: Full details here
IRCTC is launching a redesigned ticket-booking website promising significant improvement over the previous one. Here are all the ways it can change your ticket-booking experience.
If booking a train ticket on IRCTC has ever tested your patience, things may be about to get better. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation or IRCTC is expected to launch a redesigned version of its ticket-booking website today, July 15, with the promise of faster page loads, a cleaner interface, and a significantly higher capacity to handle the rush that comes with Tatkal bookings. That said, some reports suggest the launch could slip to the second week of August, around Independence Day.
The push for a new website came from an unlikely place. Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced the overhaul at an event in Rajasthan last month, after students at the event spoke up about how frustrating the current IRCTC portal is to use.
What is new on the redesigned IRCTC website
The most visible change for everyday users will be a cleaner, less cluttered experience. The new website is designed to cut down on the pop-ups, flashing banners, and repeated CAPTCHA checks that tend to appear at the worst possible moment, especially during the Tatkal booking window when every second counts.
Beyond that, passengers will now be able to choose their preferred seat or berth at the time of booking, rather than being assigned one at random. A fare calendar will also let users compare ticket prices across different dates before confirming a booking, which is handy for anyone with a flexible travel schedule looking to save money. Seat availability across all classes, Sleeper, AC 3 Tier, AC 2 Tier, and others, will now show up on a single screen, removing the need to check each class separately.
The new website will also support multiple Indian languages, making it more accessible to passengers across the country who are not comfortable navigating an English or Hindi interface. Concession bookings for Divyangjan passengers, students, and patients, which currently involve separate processes, will also be brought together on a single platform.
The bigger upgrade
The more significant upgrade is happening under the hood. The existing IRCTC platform frequently struggles during peak Tatkal hours, when lakhs of users try to book tickets within the same 60 seconds. The result is slow pages, stuck payments, and seats disappearing before a booking goes through.
The new platform has been rebuilt to handle more than 1.5 lakh ticket bookings per minute, compared to roughly 32,000 per minute on the current system. The Passenger Reservation System backend is also being scaled up to handle over 40 lakh enquiries per minute, up from around 4 lakh today. In simpler terms, the new system is built to handle nearly five times the traffic, which should mean fewer crashes and fewer failed bookings during the busiest windows of the day.
If booking a train ticket on IRCTC has ever tested your patience, things may be about to get better. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation or IRCTC is expected to launch a redesigned version of its ticket-booking website today, July 15, with the promise of faster page loads, a cleaner interface, and a significantly higher capacity to handle the rush that comes with Tatkal bookings. That said, some reports suggest the launch could slip to the second week of August, around Independence Day.
The push for a new website came from an unlikely place. Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced the overhaul at an event in Rajasthan last month, after students at the event spoke up about how frustrating the current IRCTC portal is to use.
What is new on the redesigned IRCTC website
The most visible change for everyday users will be a cleaner, less cluttered experience. The new website is designed to cut down on the pop-ups, flashing banners, and repeated CAPTCHA checks that tend to appear at the worst possible moment, especially during the Tatkal booking window when every second counts.
Beyond that, passengers will now be able to choose their preferred seat or berth at the time of booking, rather than being assigned one at random. A fare calendar will also let users compare ticket prices across different dates before confirming a booking, which is handy for anyone with a flexible travel schedule looking to save money. Seat availability across all classes, Sleeper, AC 3 Tier, AC 2 Tier, and others, will now show up on a single screen, removing the need to check each class separately.
The new website will also support multiple Indian languages, making it more accessible to passengers across the country who are not comfortable navigating an English or Hindi interface. Concession bookings for Divyangjan passengers, students, and patients, which currently involve separate processes, will also be brought together on a single platform.
The bigger upgrade
The more significant upgrade is happening under the hood. The existing IRCTC platform frequently struggles during peak Tatkal hours, when lakhs of users try to book tickets within the same 60 seconds. The result is slow pages, stuck payments, and seats disappearing before a booking goes through.
The new platform has been rebuilt to handle more than 1.5 lakh ticket bookings per minute, compared to roughly 32,000 per minute on the current system. The Passenger Reservation System backend is also being scaled up to handle over 40 lakh enquiries per minute, up from around 4 lakh today. In simpler terms, the new system is built to handle nearly five times the traffic, which should mean fewer crashes and fewer failed bookings during the busiest windows of the day.
