Western Railway (WR) has begun working to provide mobile ticketing for phones without GPRS or Internet from Tuesday. Until now, only phones with the Android operating system were able to avail technology that enabled commuters buy suburban tickets and take print-outs of the same at Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs).
WR, along with the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) at Churchgate, borrowed a leaf from a similar experiment conducted between Egmore and Tambaram suburban sections of the South Central Railway (SC). An official on condition of anonymity said, “We are trying to see if we can provide e-tickets without the Internet or mobile ticketing to those who do not have GPRS/Internet. We have launched android-based e-ticketing but realised that there is a huge section of commuters which might comprise labourers or middle-class housewives who do not own a cellphone with the Android OS but also travel once in a while. This floating population is our target.”
The WR has a total of 35 lakh commuters who travel every day, out of which around 40 per cent i.e. 14 lakh have a railway pass. The remaining 21 lakh makes up the floating population of commuters who visit ticket counters every day to buy tickets. WR is hoping to shift these 21 lakh commuters to mobile ticketing completely, “If all of the 21 lakh commuters can access the system and take an e-ticket, it will reduce the burden on our ticket counters. The plan is to get rid of as many ticket counters as we can and have less of windows or maybe only one window on either side of each station,” said the official.
Officials said it might take months to finally get something they can implement, which is why the experimentation had been kept under wraps.
Going Mobile
Mobile ticketing was introduced on the Mumbai suburban system at Dadar in December 2014 and was inaugurated by Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.
A total of only 300 to 400 e-tickets have been bought by commuters every day using the mobile ticketing system whereas the target is 21 lakh on WR and 30 lakh on CR.
The Centre for Railway Information Systems experiment in Chennai is being replicated in Mumbai with a few additions being made by WR itself.
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