Indian Railways is India’s largest and world’s seventh largest utility employer with over 1.375 million employees. The workload too, is good enough to keep all of those 1.375 million employees busy. On any other day an average of over 12,000 trains run on the tracks carrying roughly a total of over 8.5 million passengers everyday.
Managing such a massive network is no joke in any sense. A lot of thinking and efforts are taken to keep this heavy train chugging along. Engineers, doctors, worksmen, Indian Railways have a share of work from almost every profession. Quite understandably, special assistance from other experts is always a boon for the Indian Railways.
Preparing a proper timetable for all the different routes is a headache for the Indian Railways. Various processes are involved before chalking out the perfect time table. Checks have to be made regarding the number of rakes, availability of tracks and other such stuff. The whole process thus took a total time of around 15 days at least.
In a major breakthrough, a team of professors from IIT Bombay, in collaboration with the Central Railways, have formulated a software that has made it possible to get a railway Timetable prepared in just 5 minutes.
The team has templated algorithms simplifying the complete process of making timetables. The algorithms that have been put into place have almost washed off all the human efforts required for creating the timetables.
The success of this project can be estimated from the fact that it has been selected to be presented at a global seminar by the International Association of Railway Operations Research (IAROR) in France. The IAROR is known for encouraging researches in Railways and also focuses on managing rail traffic effectively all across the globe.
The Chief Public Relations Officer for Central Railways, Narendra Patil, said that he has been thankful to the team of professors who have made their two year long efforts fruitful. He stated, “This will not only help us in more efficient and easier planning but also give us a lot of options for adopting timetables for suburban operations according to our needs.”
This team of IITian professors have yet again proved that India’s technology is as good as any country’s. We hope this helps Railways in delivering more effective scheduling of trains in the future. Do let us know what you think about this excellent breakthrough in our comments section below.