Hand-held ticketing devices being tested

If all goes well, Mumbai is likely to get hand-held ticket vending terminals in six months. Trials for the machine were launched in Delhi on Monday. The portable terminal that has two gadgets will be provided to an officer who will be stationed at Thane, Borivali, Kalyan and Andheri and churn out these tickets during peak hours.

The railway ministry is hopeful that after the failure of other ticketing technologies in the city, like the UTS app, Automatic Ticket Vending Machine (ATVM) and the Cash/Coin Ticket Vending Machine (COTVM), this technology will finally be the answer to reducing long queues at counters. This is likely to also drastically minimise the investment in manpower, as well infrastructure for ticketing, a cost the railways have repeatedly said they cannot afford any more.

Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu launched the device for Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin via remote at Dadar and will be on a six-month trial. City officials said that the plan was to introduce the device in Mumbai suburban, since it sees the purchase of approximately 40 lakh unreserved tickets (card ticket) per day.

The device weighs up to one-kg and will have a mobile like device in which officials can punch the destination of the commuter and the printer attached to a waist belt will give out the ticket. “The hand-held terminal idea has been brought forward as a way to minimise the need for opening counters and the manpower too. Mumbai, which has the largest travelling crowd in the smallest section, needs the device to speed up the process of giving tickets and avoid long queues. We cannot hire anymore staff due to the financial investment it entails and hence are pushing Mumbai to be the first city to get the hand-held terminal,” said an official, on condition of anonymity.

Officials also said that the device could be diverted from normal suburban operations to tickets on routes like Nashik during festive seasons. “The device can give out a unreserved tickets so we can use it during festival rush, for example during the Kumbh Mela or even during the Ganpati season when many people travel to the Konkan area on unreserved/general tickets,” added the official. The UTS application that provides daily tickets, as well season tickets saw a similar experiment in Chennai, before it was launched in Mumbai in October last year.