CFR, on Internet

On December 14, 2002, the new train timetable for passengers has been enforced. On this occasion, Societatea Informatica Feroviara has also redone the Internet page where the train timetable can be consulted.

The first Internet site of CFR - where there are presented the features of the company - has been issued in 1996, when a group of specialists within IT Center of SNCFR has…"tried the sea with finger". Although without too much experience in the field of constructing a web page, they have achieved a presentation page of the Romanian Railways, where later on they have also installed the program for reading the train timetable for passengers.
Therefore, in the last six years, at the address www.cfr.ro , any internaut can find out general data about the organization of the Romanian railway system and statistical data about Romanian Railways, in Romanian and English languages. We are also proud of the fact that on the respective web page there is also an link to the page of our magazine, the Railway Journal, where there is also an archive of our publication, from the first number, issued on August 1998.
Naturally, the most searched information is the one related to the passengers train timetable. The program allowing viewing the train timetable has been achieved by specialists from Societatea Informatica Feroviara in collaboration with the ones from Train Timetable Unit within Traffic Department of CFR SA.
At the end of the last year, once with the change of the passengers train timetable, the specialists within Societetea Informatica Feroviara have work 24 hours a day in order to meet the deadline, so that those who were going to travel by trains starting with December 14 to find out in time, on the Internet, the information they need.
On this occasion, there has also appeared the idea to modernize the site. Talking with Mrs. Mironescu, the director, we have found out: "There have been a few tentative to modernize and recreate this web project, but we have been very caught up with IRIS Project; later on we at least tried to recreate the design, the aspect of the page, being helped by certain private companies, and finally there was nothing finalized. And then, because we had to change the train timetable on December 14, we thought to change a bit the aspect of the page.
The change of the format and the application from the site would take more time. Anyone who was accessing the site can see that there still are a few "bricks" in construction stage. The part linking to the passengers and freight companies, the link to the Railway Journal have remained the same: we have changed a bit only the information about CFR SA, with data we had available, from the development strategy of CFR.
The graphical conception is of 100% made of us, with means quite modest. We are planning to make a sub-site for out company, and, of course, to keep up with the news that appear in the field. For the graphical conception of the train timetable we will also have soon enough the copyrights.
The reality is that we do not have resources dedicated for the achievement of a web page, because this is not the our activity profile, we do not have editors, techno-editors and design specialists; or, the construction of a site is quite similar to an ordinary publication and, moreover, there are needed information about each company that we present."
"Due to" the train timetable, the site www.cfr.ro is quite visited and, normally, the one who is looking the timetable of a train sees a picture or a link and wonders: "Let's see the news presented by the CFR employees here!". The photo gallery recently inserted on line is a very meritorious invitation of the ones who are working at the construction of this site, in collaboration with CFR Calatori SA, and represents a first step in the creation of a new page, a more modern one.
That's why, in order to attract as many visitors, the ones that are handling the modernization of the web page, have proposed to create an active site: besides the photo gallery, which is going to permanently enrich with new images, to permanently up date the information from the train timetable section and to add all the time news from CFR life.
Moreover, the monitoring of www.cfr.ro through the analysis service of the traffic on the Internet www.trafic.ro (where there has been added at 12.11.2000) shows that this is one of the sites frequently visited, occupying the 90 place in the general top of the Romanian sites (from over 8,500 registered). We have found out that in one week the number of visitors is, in average, of around 7,000, the "busiest" day being the Friday; on January of this year there have been recorded over 35,000 visitors.
The placement on the Internet of so many information referring to the railway system can be so welcomed, therefore being included in the new European tendency, which clearly represent the transparency and the collaboration.

Ileana Statie