Design Of An Electronic Railway Ticket Reservation System For Rift Valley Railways A Case Study: Kibuli Railway Station Kampala

ABSTRACT

The Electronic Railway Ticket Reservation System for Rift Valley Railways enables a more convenient and quick reservation of railway tickets by passengers electronically, whereby they can do so at their convenience in time and place provided they have access to internet. The need of this system arose because of a remarkable increase in number of train travellers compared to the past where by this type of transport was majorly for cargo. This therefore meant that complex problems especially those related to managing information and manipulating data pertaining ticket bookings were at their peak, considering such a vast system. Advertising and providing Information about the Rift Valley Railways was cumbersome as well. However, computerization of the system has enabled users overcome many of its previous limitations whereby, it is now more efficient and convenient to learn and use. This has been possible because the system provides users with information about trains and their time schedules, simplifies reserving tickets for the passenger, is fast in executing data at the point of need, has an element of error validation, capturing information about passengers, as well as providing attractive interfaces with easy navigation throughout the system, which are all accomplished by just a click of a button at the users’ convenience in time and place. Using methods such as observation, interviewing and sampling as means of collecting data, the researchers were able to critically analyse the previous system, and site out the major problem. The user requirements were relied upon for the new system design. In order to fulfill those above requirements, the researchers developed an Electronic Railway Ticket Reservation System to ease data access and retrieval for instant report production after the administrator’s authority to access the system. A code was therefore written using Mysql for the Database, PHP and JavaScript for process queries and connectivity to the database, CSS for styling the web pages and HTML for designing user platforms.