Mumbai : Commuters of Central Railway (CR) will have two new modes of ticketing at their disposal by August end. Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) will start testing for paperless ticketing and modified cash/coin ticket vending machines (CTVMs) by the end of August.
After the launching of paperless mobile ticketing and gradual sale of tickets on the Western Railway (WR), officials are all set to implement the same on CR as well. A team of railway officials has been deputed with an offline version of the paperless mobile ticketing in their cell phones. These officials will now test the application by booking tickets within the station premises, trains and outside the premises as well.
An official associated with the testing said, “Geo- mapping of the place has been completed and now we are checking the system for any leaks. If at all there are tickets booked from within the station premises then it will lead to loss of revenue which is being tested.”
The paperless mobile ticketing application will most likely be functional in another 15 days. Railway officials are expecting improvement in the sale of tickets after paperless mobile ticketing will also be implemented on the CR.
At present, an average of 500 paperless mobile tickets are being sold on WR while another 1.30 lakh commuters have registered the application.
Another mode of ticketing that will be available to commuters will be the cash/coin ticket vending machines which will also be implemented by August end as soon as testing by CRIS is completed. CRIS will be testing new features of these vending machines which have been added with new features for making it operation-friendly for railway employees.
These machines have been equipped with wheels to its lower portion for making it convenient for railway employees to turn the lower portion in which cash will be stored and ticketing roles will be fitted. A total of 100 such machines will be put up on CR network while another 100 will be put up on WR network.
Iram Siddique
