IRCTC is set to upgrade its ticket booking system to make online train reservations faster and more reliable, particularly during peak booking hours. The changes come as the railway ticketing platform continues to handle high passenger traffic during reservation and Tatkal booking windows.
How IRCTC Plans To Improve Ticket Booking
One of the key changes being planned is an active-active disaster recovery system. The system is intended to keep services running if one part of the infrastructure faces an outage. IRCTC has said that even a one or two-minute disruption during peak booking periods can affect passengers, making system availability particularly important.
The proposed disaster recovery setup is likely to come up at Secunderabad. This would provide an additional layer of support during periods when large numbers of passengers are trying to access the ticket booking platform at the same time.
IRCTC has also been working on its website experience. The beta version of its redesigned website was launched on July 15, with changes aimed at making the booking process simpler. These include fewer steps during checkout, seat availability across classes and an option to save passenger details for quicker bookings. The beta version also does not have advertisements, pop-ups or unnecessary CAPTCHA. IRCTC is expected to launch the full version of the redesigned website after further changes.
Measures To Handle Heavy Traffic
The company is also taking steps to manage suspicious and unauthorised activity on its platform, particularly during peak booking hours. IRCTC is using Akamai for bot mitigation and content delivery, while the time limit for agent inactivity on the website has been increased from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.
According to the report, nearly 89 per cent of reserved train tickets are now booked online. Between June 2025 and June 2026, passengers booked 65.08 crore reserved tickets through the Passenger Reservation System (PRS), out of which 57.90 crore were booked online.
The online booking share has increased the importance of a stable digital reservation system, especially during the 8 am Advance Reservation Period opening and Tatkal booking windows at 10 am for AC classes and 11 am for non-AC classes.
