Now Reading: Indian Railways to replace 40-year-old PRS with 5x faster cloud system
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Indian Railways to replace 40-year-old PRS with 5x faster cloud system
Indian Railways is replacing its nearly 40-year-old Passenger Reservation System with a cloud-based platform that can process 1.5 lakh tickets per minute, nearly five times the current capacity of 32,000 per minute.…
The Story in Brief
Indian Railways is replacing its nearly 40-year-old Passenger Reservation System with a cloud-based platform that can process 1.5 lakh tickets per minute, nearly five times the current capacity of 32,000 per minute. The new system, built by the Centre for Railway Information Systems, will also handle 40 lakh passenger enquiries a minute, up from 4 lakh currently.
The IRCTC beta website went live on July 15, 2026. Early data shows Tatkal bookings completed within the first three minutes improved by over 5%, and within five minutes by about 3%. The old system will not be shut down immediately; the new one will be tested in phases under different traffic loads to avoid disrupting a service that handled 65.08 crore reserved tickets in the year to June 2026, with 89% booked online.
The Indian Opinion
Hype around railway digitisation usually fades after the first festive season crash. The 5x speed claim matters only if it holds during peak hours. Early Tatkal data shows a 5% improvement in first-three-minute bookings, modest but real. The real test will come next Diwali when 1.5 lakh tickets a minute face actual demand. Can the cloud platform handle that without glitches, or will passengers be stuck staring at a spinning wheel again?
Source: businesstoday.in
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
