The automatic ticket vending machines (ATVMs) have been lying unused for nearly 2 years all through the pandemic, since March 2020. These shall now be replaced on both Central and Western Railways. This comes at a time when the rail authorities are pushing for mobile ticketing, which is said to most logical solution to beat the threat of Covid-19 pandemic and its different variants.
The railway authorities will also be extending the usage of these ATVMs and keep new ones at railway stations. In the recent Budget as mentioned in Pink Book for 2022-23, the Western Railway will be replacing 377 ATVMs for which an amount of Rs 50 lakh has been allotted in the outlay proposed in 2022-23. The total sanctioned cost for replacing all these ATVMs is more than Rs 6.70 crore.
Likewise the Central Railway will be replacing 337 ATVMs, 110 station management consoles and 110 RFID card readers in 2022-23. For the coming financial year, they have proposed an outlay of Rs 49.22 lakh while the total sanctioned cost is Rs 6.30 crore. Sources said that there is a possibility of getting newer ATVMs as well with better tech in coming months.
For instance another 605 smart card based ATVMs is expected to be bought at a cost of Rs 5 crore in 2022-23 on the Central Railway. “We haven’t finalized the tech and other details but will certainly work out something keeping Covid-19 in mind. Moreover with NCMC card in the anvil, these machines will be useful,” said a Railway official. Primarily the ATVMs haven’t been restarted as multiple people will be touching the buttons on this machine to generate a ticket.
Back in December 2014, Mumbai suburban’s ticketing system saw entry of ticketless way of travelling in local trains. For the first time mobile ticketing was launched in which people had the option of filling in details of their journey from their phone number after which a print out of ticket could have been taken from ATVM machines.
Gradually, over the years, system was upgraded in a way that passengers can simply buy the local train ticket on their cell phone using UTS mobile app. Thus it eliminated the need to carry a printed ticket or even Season pass to travel in local trains. Over the years the contribution of ATVMs has been 15 percent or so while that of mobile ticketing has touched 4-5 percent.
“The railway authorities should also ensure that the existing ATVMs are repaired that are lying unused and mired in technical glitches. Simply replacing them would mean wastage of public money,” said Subhash Gupta, president, Rail Yatri Sangh.
The railway authorities believe that due to the pandemic, the scope for mobile ticketing would increase as people would not want to stand in queues at ticket booking counters and would prefer downloading using the mobile app. The ticket checking staff has also been provided hand held machines for checking these tickets.
