Improving Pakistan Railway

I wrote this a few years ago, after a casual meeting with the then Secretary / Chairman Pakistan Railways .. and was originally posted on my blog at: https://ufqblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/suggesstions-for-pakistan-railways/

I am re-posting it here:

Here are a few suggestions that may cost less but bring in some revenue/betterment to the Pakistan Railways while helping improve image in my humble opinion:

• Integrate the scattered look-ups on the website to a consolidated and comprehensive, easy to use, and understand, single point planner for bookings and fares, like in the case or various online flight bookings. Currently you have to go to one look-up to calculate fares, another one to check train timings, a third place to check seat availability and yet another place to check the name of the trains.
• Integrate if any hotel bookings or just provide list, rent and contact information of hotels in the destination city (of course you charge the hotel for an advertisement on the pakrail website).
• If the Train Tracking system is online and each train’s location can be tracked at real time, and the booking system is online, then the 117 inquiry system can be consolidated at a regional level and if for any reason the center is unavailable, a fall-back on another regional center or automated IVR system (Press 1 for … Press 2 for …)
• Stations located near tourist area’s be turned into model railway stations. (Railway Heritage Museum at Golra is a very fine example of what a rural station should look and feel like)
• Adopt a Carriage / Train / Track section type scheme for companies be looked into. Short of privatizing the national treasure, we can perhaps go for a public-private partnership at the micro-level where advertisement rights and products of the sponsoring company get preference on a particular train for a week / month. The concept is similar to the various time slots on the media channels where each time slot is sponsored by some company. This should generate additional revenue.
•  Adopt a carriage /train / track section type scheme for individuals will also give a sense of accomplishment to the citizenry.
• A more proactive approach in giving out information as to what’s new and what’s coming soon, should help boost the PR of PakRail