A choppy ride

Online railway reservation's website down most of the times

What started out as one of the most promising and widely appreciated ventures by the Indian Railways, has turned out to be a damp squib. The website that facilitates passengers to book their tickets online, www.irctc.co.in, does not work most of the times. Although the home page and a few other pages come up fast, I, invariably, get stuck at the page where I have to enter the station name and extract its relevant code, just before I proceed to select the chosen train I want to travel on and other relevant details. This has happened at several times and it's been a long time since I have seamlessly been able to book a ticket.

The Indian railways may have the intention to match the budget airlines and providing benefits of technological advances, to its passengers. But if the website does not function most of the times, what's the point in even trying? Don't the Indian railways know how many people use trains to travel from one point to another. An increasing fraction of this is bound to want to book its tickets on the internet. With internet slowly catching up, the internet traffic is bound to increase. Plus, the Indian railways started e-tickets last year. With a useless and a badly maintained website, its internet venture is already giving out red signals. Sad!