Seat Allotment
Seat allotment in PRS depends upon the following:
- Train type
- Serial/ Non serial
- Journey type.
There are two Train type in PRS and they are as follows:
End-to-End train:
"End to end from station" & "end to end destination station" range is specified in end to end train. These trains should normally be those where there is very heavy demand for the long distance journeys.
Non End-to-End train:
These should be the trains where passengers seeking accommodation are not predominantly for long distances.
Allocation in End-to-End trains:
I.A few long distance important trains are earmarked as 'End-to-End' trains to take care of the traffic to be booked for a long distance passenger. End to end station range is defined and the passengers travelling from and to that range are booked against End-to-End quota.
II.For passengers who do not fall in the category of End-to-End passengers are allotted against the pooled quota.
III. A few pooled quota seats are earmarked for short distance passenger in end-to-end train. Once this pooled quota is allotted, the short-distance passengers go in pooled quota waiting list even if general quota is available.
Utilization of partially vacant berths:
- Utilization of partially vacant berth is allowed only against general and pooled quota.
- Partial vacant berths are given priority over full vacant berths in case of normal reservation transaction.
- Booking against partially vacant berths are allowed even though source waitlist is already started.
- Partially vacant berths can be utilized against source as well as remote location booking.
- In case of block booking end to end berths are having priority over the partially vacant berths.
Maximum utilization of accommodations by first using:
Berths/seats in sectional coaches and those allotted to the road-side stations
Same berth booked for different leg of journey.
Recent Changes:
- New functionality is provided recently which allows the booking against partially vacant general source and pooled quota even though end-to-end waitlist is already started.
- For booking against remote quota system will utilize partially vacant gn/pq berths once remote quota is exhausted.
- Tatakal waitlist tickets can be issued across the counters. Tatakal tickets can be issued against roadside quota as well as against remote tatkal quota.
- Provision is made to allow the remote location booking even though train is already cancelled at source station [for bkg from source to remote].
- New fuctionality is added to provide enquiry as well as booking against cancer quota “CQ” .Cancer quota is internally treated as “OS” quota with controlling station as QTCP.
- New Lower Berth Quota “SS “is introduced in the system for single senior citizen as well as single lady of age 45 and above traveling alone, and pregnant women.
- Booking is accepted through form no. 2 .If above condition satisfies then only ss quota request is passed to allocation server by client side.
- SS quota availability is possible only thru enquiry option no. 1
- SS quota will behave similar to Ladies quota I.e. once SS quota berths are exhausted then system will issue the berths from general quota as per corresponding remote and then waitlist tickets will be issued.
Serial Allocation:
- IAC, FC berths fall under serially allocated category.
- During Reservation such transactions are not allotted any coach/seat/berth numbers.
- However, the system will indicate whether the passengers will get confirmed accommodation or will go into the waiting list.
- Allotment of coach/ seat/berth for serially allocated transactions will be made at the time of preparation of charts.
- This mainly to take care of coupe/cabin requirements of the VIPs.
- The coach/ seat/ berth numbers in the case of serially allocated passengers is done by charting staff at the time of chart preparation taking care of the requirements of the VIPs for cabin/coupes.
- At the time of Reservation passengers can only get confirmed/ RAC/ Wait-list status.
Non Serial Allocation:
- Transactions of AC-2 Tier berths, Sleeper class, AC 3 tier, AC Chair Car and Second Class fall under the Non-serially allocated category.
- Seat/ coach/ berth numbers in these cases are assigned on the basis of the following criteria at the time of reservation.
- Coach selection criterion
- Seat/ Berth selection criterion
- Compact accommodation for thru’ reservations
- Individual choices of berths/ seats
Non-Serial: Normal transaction:
- The details of the transaction i.e. quota, source, destination of the passengers is captured.
- The Coaches meeting these broad requirements are sorted in the order of increasing availability of accommodation.
- All the cabins of the first applicable coach are scanned to see if the choice can be met in one cabin.
- The Order of Cabin Search for each class is from the middle of the Coach.
- If such a cabin can be found then this is the coach selected. Otherwise, the next coach is scanned and so on till all the applicable coaches have been scanned.
- If such a coach cannot be found then the coach satisfying the cabin compaction is selected and seat berths are allotted keeping in view old passengers and ladies.
- That is compaction is given priority over choice.
- In case no single cabin can satisfy the requirement, then the transaction is split over minimum number of cabins.
- In case no single coach can satisfy the requirement then the transaction is split over the least number of coaches which together, satisfy the requirement.
- In case the requirement is not met, either fully or partially, then all or some of the passengers will go to RAC or Wait-list.
Journey Type:
There are three type of transaction is journey type and they are as follows:
- Direct transaction
- Non-Direct Direct transaction
- Remote (location) transaction
1. Direct Transaction:
For non end-to-end train, direct transaction is one which originates at a station which lies on the first leg of the journey and before the first station which has road-side quota and terminates at a station which lies after the last station with road-side quota.
For end-to-end train, direct transaction is one in which journey commencing station which in the first "end to end definition" range and the destination station lies in second "end to end to definition" range.
Logic for Direct Transaction:
The reservation module will provide accommodation to direct passenger against general quota following the logic given previously for NORMAL TXN
If the accommodation is not free, they will be put in general RAC/Waitlist.
2. Non-direct transaction:
Non direct transaction is one which is not a direct transaction and originates from a station which lies prior to the second remote location. The first remote location of a train is the source station.
Logic for Non-Direct Transaction:
The following is the order in which Non-Direct passengers are tried to be accommodated:
- Road-Side Quota of the first Road-Side station beyond his destination.
- Sectional Coach with destination nearest (but falling beyond) the passengers destination.
- Road-Side quota/ Sectional Coach in order of increasing distance from the passengers destination.
- Night/Day quota
- Ex-Reservations
- Through Coaches
- A select combinations of the above.
3. Remote transaction:
For non end-to-end train, remote transaction is one which is not a direct transaction and originates either from the second remote location or from a station which lies after the second remote location.
For end-to-end train, remote transaction is one which is not a direct transaction and originates either from the second remote location or from a station which lies prior to the second remote location.
Logic for Remote transaction:
Remote location transactions will be:-
First
Tried against Station Quota (Remote location quota)
and then
In the pooled quota till the limit of pooled quota for that remote location is over or the total pooled limit is over
and then
They will go into the respective station quota wait-list.
Compactness and the choice given by the passenger will be taken into account while allocating the berths in case remote locations also as in the case of source locations
The logic is same as mentioned for Normal txn.