Railways to launch non-AC chair car class

ahmedabad: encouraged by the operation of jansewa express, consisting only of second class unreserved coaches on various routes across the country, the indian railways is all set to introduce new specially designed non-air-conditioned chair cars in the proposed jan shatabdi express trains. according to official sources, the indian railways is planning to introduce 16 jan shatabdi express as part of the 150th anniversary celebration of indian railways across the country. these trains are expected to be flagged off in july this year. the introduction of these non-ac chair cars in the new jan shatabadis would offer passengers facility of speedier travel, as they would be running at high speeds of 120-130 km per hour. though priced a wee bit more than the normal second class chair cars, the officials hope that they would be able to attract passengers, as they would be able to save on time. in order to provide better ticketing facilities to the passengers travelling in the ‘unreserved’ compartments, the indian railways now plans to launch computerised ticketing in a pattern similar to the one offered to the passengers carrying ‘reserved’ tickets. according to an estimate, of the 13 million passengers travelling on rails every day, at least 12 million of them travel on unreserved compartments, officials said. this new ticketing system would help the passengers to book their unreserved tickets from locations other than the boarding station. the system will also be able to issue monthly and quarterly season tickets, and also have the flexibility of issuing tickets from anywhere to anywhere, even for a journey on a future date. the indian railways hopes to launch a pilot project sometime this year. it has also been decided to increase the network of its passenger reservation system centres in the country. they would also be set up at stations booking more than 100 reservations per day. in the current year, prs terminals have been provided at 90 locations, taking the total tally to over 700.