The Layman’s Guide to book Kerala bus tickets online

Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) is the pioneer organisation in the state in the public transport industry. Launched during the 1938, KSRTC has been serving the citizens relentlessly with high quality service in terms of number of vehicles and comfort. With the internet wave sweeping across the transport sector, KSRTC too started its online ticketing service for the benefit of thousands of its registered users. It takes just minutes to book Kerala bus tickets online, which is why most of the passengers prefer this mode as compared to the earlier method of getting their tickets booked at the reservation counters of the KSRTC office.

KSRTC tickets online can be done on buses plying to and fro from important locations like Palakkad, Kannur, Kozhikode, Trissur, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram Central, Bangalore Majestic, Bangalore Satellite and Kottarakkara. While doing an online booking, passengers must be ready to shell out additional 20 INR per ticket towards transaction charges in addition to the reservation charges of 10 INR per ticket. In order to book Kerala bus tickets online, one needs to enter into the official portal, www.keralartc.com. From here, one must choose the ticket booking option, which will lead to the page, where users can enter their user id and password. New users can register themselves by providing basic information like name, contact address, mobile number, etc. 

The next page will then ask the user to choose from the source and destination stations. After entering the same, the user should click on the ‘find buses’ option to get a list of buses plying between the two stations and the seat availability for that particular day plus the following 21 days. KSRTC tickets online booking is indeed beneficial because the user is presented with a host of bus options to choose from depending on his comfortable timings. This screen shows other important details as well like the departure time, type of bus, via route, bus fare, etc.

Users can choose the particular bus that they want and click on the same, after which they will be directed to the page where they can book the number of seats they want. A picture showing the seat position in the bus is available to the user here. After selecting the seats, users should proceed to book ticket option, where he has to enter the passenger details and select the station where they would board from. The next is the payment screen where VISA or MasterCard Credit/Debit cards can be used for making payment. The confirmed ticket is then displayed in a PDF format on the screen, which the user can save on his system.

Penalty charges applicable on offenders as per the latest Indian Railway fine rules

Every passenger who makes use of the rail network in India should possess a valid ticket with him or her. A passenger can travel only in that particular class of accommodation for which the ticket has been issued for. For example, a passenger who holds a ticket for sleeper class coach cannot travel in a first AC coach. Travelling in the incorrect class, holding tickets that are outdated, travelling without ticket etc. are all punishable offences as per the railway fine rules. These rules are continuously revised and the passengers should ensure that they do not flout the rules in order to avoid coughing up heavy penalty charges.

It is the moral responsibility of the passengers to ensure that they book valid tickets well in advance before utilising the services of Indian Railways. The railway fine rules keep getting updated frequently and passengers must keep themselves abreast of the latest penalty and fine rules. The penalty without ticket charges will differ as per the distance of the journey, class of accommodation and the intent of the passenger. 

As per the railway fine rules, if a passenger has intentionally travelled without a ticket or has used a ticket that is already expired, he will be punished as per the provisions mentioned in Section 137 of the Railways Act. Depending on the nature and intent of the passenger, he may be put in jail for a period of 6 months or levied a fine amounting to a maximum of 1000 INR. If the case is severe, the passenger will receive both the punishments. In addition to this, if he is found to be travelling in a higher class or a superfast train holding a ticket that is valid for a lower class of accommodation or a normal train, he will be asked to pay the supplementary charges as well as penalty. In all of the above instances, the minimum amount of penalty charges would be around 500 INR and not less than that.

Section 137 should be applied only when it is clearly proved that the intent of the passenger was to commit a fraud (escaping, hiding inside the toilet at the time of ticket examination etc.). If the ticket examiner is not able to prove concisely whether the passenger’s intent was to defraud the Railways or not, then the penalty without ticket charges as explained in Section 138 would be levied on him.

Getting to know about trains between stations has never been easier!

The Indian Railways has introduced some splendid services for the benefit of its passengers. Today, passengers can get valuable information from the official portal of the Indian Railways with just a click. One of the most sought-after services is about the number of trains between stations. People who want to plan their travel well in advance find this service quite helpful as they can get a list of trains that run between a particular pair of stations in seconds.

Checking for trains between important stations is now a breeze as the passenger just needs to key in some basic details in order to get the full updates. A passenger can key in any two stations as the source and destination, select the date of journey and class of accommodation and click on submit. The official portal of Indian Railways then throws up an exhaustive list of trains that run between those stations, time of departure at the source station, time of arrival at the destination station, train number, train name, time taken to travel between the two stations, days when the train is operated etc.
Passengers do not have to know the codes of the source and destination stations to check the list of trains between stations. It is enough if they enter 3 or 4 characters of the name of the station’s name as the system automatically populates the same. Apart from getting the full list of train names and numbers, passengers can also get to know about their availability of seats, fare, schedule etc. by choosing a particular train from the list that is displayed.

This feature of getting the list of trains between important stations is indeed a huge support for passengers for planning their trip. They can plan their travel based on the arrival and departure time of the trains at the respective stations where they plan to board and get down. These trains are also accompanied with important information like the days during which they run, so that passengers can book tickets accordingly. Since the class of accommodation is already keyed in at the time of entering the source and destination codes, only those trains that have that particular class are displayed on the screen, making the job of the passengers easier. The source station need not necessarily be the station from where a train starts. Special “*” marks are included in these trains to denote that the source is not the originating station.

Delhi Suburban Railway still ruling the roost among local commuters

I have been a regular traveler in the various transport system in Delhi and here I want to share my experience about Delhi Suburban Railway service that many of you would have seen in the city of Delhi. It forms a part of Northern Railway that operates its services in NCR region. NCR as many of you know as a National Capital Region comprises of Delhi and its neighboring cities that are Ghaziabad, Faridabad and states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. I will here make you aware about the services operational through Delhi Suburban Railway and these include EMU and MEMU. Many passenger trains that falls under the DMU services and ends up till city of Rewari in state of Haryana is also part of National Capital Region.

The Delhi Suburban Railway runs on the same track as used for the trains that are operational on longer distances. On popular demand in 2009, a special train for the ladies in the Delhi Suburban Railway was initiated and this ran between the routes from New Delhi to Palwal. In future, Indian railways are planning to connect Ghaziabad city in Uttar Pradesh to Panipat city on Haryana by starting two other trains that will be ladies special.

During the current times, EMU that forms the part of Transport in Delhi are operational with 12 number of coaches out of which two compartments is allocated for ladies whereas the remaining 10 compartments are for the general public. While scanning through current news about Transport of Delhi, I got to know that Northern Railway has approximately 110 suburban trains that connect to the nearby cities and majorly run during the peak hours and is mostly flooded with crowd.

The other railway form that I see operational in Delhi Suburban area is the Delhi Ring Railway that forms a circular chain. It came into existence in 1981 during the Asian Games. The initial service was started for the transportation of goods during 1975 while later it was exalted to passenger service to be used during Asian Games. It is a 35 km long route and takes around 90 to 120 minutes to traverse the entire route whether be clockwise or anti-clockwise that operates from Hazrat Nizamuddin station during the hours 8 am to 7 pm.

The Delhi Ring Railway though is a little failure since the other modes of transportation were not well networked with this railway system.