Mumbai: The Western Railway (WR) has made a complete shift to the use of hand-held terminals (HHT) on all trains plying on the network, moving further towards an eco-friendly rail network and a digital India. The shift will enable a quick, real-time and effective means of ticket checking.
Doing away with the manual procedure, this paperless facility will help travelling ticket examiners (TTEs) get real-time information about accommodation status en route and enable them to book tickets online on trains that have a remote location facility. Remote location facility in a train refers to an arrangement where portions of the seats are earmarked for intermediate stoppages/stations falling in the route of the train.
“The HHTs have been provided in all 298 mail/express trains operated by WR. A total of 1,385 ticket-checking staff who are manning these trains have been provided with the devices,” said a WR official.
HHT will help TTEs to provide vacant seats to RAC and waitlisted passengers
According to the official, trains of other railways which pass through the WR network will also be checked using the HHTs. “These HHTs help the ticket checking staff to allot vacant berths to RAC and waitlisted passengers and can also be used to send updated information about the occupancy of seats / berths back to the server,” he official added.
“The HHTs ensure better transparency in the seat allotment system and do away with the cumbersome manual procedures involved in the same. With the implementation of the HHTs, the system of printing charts is now obsolete, thereby making the work paperless,” said Sumit Thakur, WR's chief public relations officer. The system also helps the Indian Railways better utilise capacity in case a passenger fails to board the train or cancels his / her ticket before the preparation of the chart.
WR first introduced the HHT devices in the form of tablets in August Kranti Rajdhani Express in 2018.
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