Ticket vending machines to accept notes

After installing 50 smart card-operated automatic ticket vending machines in the division, Madurai Division of Southern Railway is introducing ATVMs that could be also operated with currency notes and coins.

Divisional Railway Manager Sunil Kumar Garg said that people could insert currency notes and coins into the machine to get tickets. “This will be like an additional ticket booking counter that would ease the queue in the counters,” he said.

Installation of one such machine was under way at the main concourse of Madurai Railway junction on Tuesday.

A railway official said that the machines would be installed at six railway stations in the division.

Though the smart card offered by the railways for using at the ATVMs did not earn much patronage, the machines have become popular among passengers who make use of the services of facilitators to buy unreserved tickets at various railway stations. The new machine would help people use it without smart cards. People need to insert currency notes and coins, one by one, and follow the instructions on the machines to get the tickets after choosing their destinations. The cash inserted would be returned by the machine if the transactions fail,” an officer said.

Mr. Garg told reporters that LED coach indication boards were being provided at important stations to help passengers get closer to the location of their coaches on the platform.

Saving on diesel

The division would save Rs. 25 crore every year on foreign exchange for importing diesel on electrification of Madurai-Tuticorin and Vanchi Maniyachi-Tirunelveli sections. Additional Divisional Railway Manager R.V.B. Babu, Chief Medical Superintendent G. Sahoo, Senior Divisional Operations Manager R. Senthil Kumar and Senior Divisional Commercial Manager S.T. Ramalingam were present.

They will be installed at six railway stations in Madurai division to ease queue

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/ticket-vending-machines-to-accept-notes/article7898298.ece

 

Coming soon: Mumbai train commuters can book a season pass on their smart phone

The idea of getting a suburban train ticket without standing in queue, at the ticket counter or the automatic ticket vending machines (ATVMs), became a reality in July when the Railways started paperless ticketing on mobile phones. But it does not appear to have enthused Mumbaikars, and so the Railways are making yet another attempt to interest them by introducing the option of buying season passes through mobile ticketing.

The Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) — the software coding agency of the Indian Railways — has prepared the mobile ticketing system and is likely to start it from October 7. “We are ready with introducing the season passes and platform ticket options in the mobile ticket app,” confirmed Uday Bobhate, General Manager, CRIS.

According to officials, season passes are bought by nearly 65 percent of the total commuter base of 75 lakh people travelling on the suburban system. The option of skipping the queue while buying monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and yearly passes will now be available on smart phones, which might lure more people into using them.
As per process, the option will be provided on the first page after opening the UTS app. A commuter can book a season pass at least 10 days before the existing pass expires. “An option of selecting a date after the validity of the earlier season pass will also be provided,” said a railway official.

The money will be deducted from the R-wallet that will be created by the user. A separate file will be created within the UTS app where this season pass will be stored. If a ticket collector asks the commuter to present his ticket, he or she will only have to flash this ticket on their phone. The officials said that no changes could be made after booking so as to keep it tamper free.

The paperless mobile ticket option on UTSonMobile app was inaugurated in July by Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu. It works on Android and Windows phones and was initially launched for Western Railway commuters. This gave commuters the option of not taking printouts. With the season pass option coming in, mobile ticketing — for daily and season pass — will also be extended to Central Railway as well, thus helping all 75-lakh daily commuters.
Mobile ticketing a flop

Presently mobile ticketing has not been a hit with Mumbaikars. Recently GC Agarwal, General Manager of Western Railway had said, “Mobile ticketing has not picked up as expected and barely 1,000-odd tickets are sold every day”.

The figures too, show that from July to September the WR authorities have sold 30,965 paperless tickets, which have fetched them a mere R4.88 lakh. Mobile ticketing was first introduced in late December 2014 wherein people were allowed to book tickets from their cell phones, but then they had to take printouts from ATVM machines. From December onwards, the railways have sold 91,302 tickets — from mobile ticketing where printouts of these tickets were taken from ATVMs — that fetched them Rs 14.58 lakh.

Sources said that some of the possible reasons for mobile ticketing’s poor performance could be the transactional surcharge of Rs 10. This is charged to all commuters who want to recharge their e-wallet, apart from the service charge. The Railways have already written letters to the Ministry of Finance asking them to waive off this surcharge as they are running a public transport.

How to use it
1. Download and install UTS app on your smart phone
2. First-time users need to sign up
3. Select the city as Mumbai
4. Use normal/quick booking as per choice given in the app window
5. Purchase tickets using R-wallet
6. R-wallet can be recharged on http://www.utson mobile.indianrail.gov.in or at any suburban ticket window (recharge can be minimum R100 and maximum R5,000)
7. Same e-wallet can be used to book the season pass and platform ticket

How mobile ticketing works
>> The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has mapped the entire route from Churchgate to Dahanu by satellite.
>> One can book a ticket on one’s mobile phone if one is 30 metres away from the outer tracks, up to a maximum of 2 kilometres.
>> A ticket booked using the app has a distinct colour code for each day and an embedded Quick Response (QR) code that cannot be forwarded to another mobile, nor edited.

Voices

M Ranade, Media person
I think the mobile ticketing scheme is a good thing as I don’t need to stand in queues. If season passes are introduced, then there is no need to worry about forgetting a pass at home and it will be convenient too.

A Tripathi, student
Mobile ticketing is very convenient, especially when I need to rush for my classes or any exams. I need not waste time standing in queue. It is surprising that people aren’t using it and railways need to advertise this scheme more.

– See more at: http://www.mid-day.com/articles/coming-soon-mumbai-train-commuters-can-book-a-season-pass-on-their-smart-phone/16580166#sthash.s2xxbS1n.dpuf

 

Mumbai: Railway commuters prefer ticket counters, not ATVMs

The number of Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM) has more than doubled in the past four years on the Central Railway (CR), but there is a problem. The tickets issued through these machines have not increased proportionately.

The statistics procured from CR indicate that more than 60% (around six lakh) daily suburban commuters still buy tickets at the counter. Around 2.35 lakh daily commuters opt for ATVMs, while 1.80 lakh prefer Jan Sadharan Ticket Booking Sewak (JTBS) and 500-600 passengers choose mobile ticketing.

The ATVMs were introduced by the Railways with much fanfare to replace cheaper coupon vending machines (CVMs) that were popular with the commuters. But it seems they have failed to pick up. For suburban commuters, this means long ticketing queues still persist because ATVMs are not user-friendly. The breakup of ticket sales, according to CR data, showed the average daily ticket sales through ATVMs had increased to 2.74 lakh in April 2014-15, when the number of ATVMs was 382. However, it dropped to 1.46 lakh in July last year.

Railway authorities attributed this reduction to the sudden withdrawal of facilitators, following the railway board order. “The ATVMs are very confusing because of the 7-8 steps involved. Therefore, we had proposed hot-key ATVMs to the railway board and Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS), which will involve only three steps. But so far we have not received any response,” said a senior CR official.

Each ATVM is worth Rs1.25lakh. This means more than Rs 8.27crore of the taxpayers’ money is spent to procure 662 ATVMs, but they have failed to serve the purpose. Whereas, the proposed ATVMs by CR will cost only Rs 75,000, the prototype of which is also ready.

The number of ATVMs available on the suburban section is 662, of which 280 were installed in the past four months. Still, the number of daily average tickets sold is 2.35 lakh. Uday Bobhate, general manager, Centre for Railway Information System, said, “The demand to develop any new IT module has to come from the railway board. We have not received any such demand from the board.”

Hindustan Times

 

Central Railway ticket sales at counters up by 13 %

The Central Railway (CR) has seen an increase in sales at its ticket counters by 13 per cent since April when railway staff working as facilitators on the Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) were told to stop issuing tickets.

The Railway Board had asked the Railways to stop the facilitators from June 27. As a direct result of this, ticket counters have seen a steady rise in the number of commuters.

A senior Railway official said, on condition of anonymity, “We have an average sale of 9.15 lakh tickets per day, and until April, ATVMs were taking the rush away from our counters. In April, via facilitators, around 2.70 lakh tickets were sold. But as of November we have sold only 1.60 lakh tickets via ATVM, with an almost 13 percent increase at the counter.” “We have gone from selling 51 per cent of tickets at the counters to 64 per cent, due to which queues are getting longer and our window clerks are having a hard time handling the crowd at stations like CST, Dadar, Thane and Kalyan,” added the official.

The CR earlier had 702 facilitators across its Mainline and Harbour line, which are now limited to only 81 retired employees, due which buying a ticket has become a tiring exercise for commuters.

Many of the commuters still do not own ATVM cards or find it difficult to operate the machines. The official said, “We are going to put up ATVM card rates on the counters itself as we found many commuters do not know them. This way we want to encourage commuters to start using the ATVM cards so that they spend less time in queues and we are able to dispense tickets at counters faster.”

Asian Age

 

Railways launches Go-India smart card

As smart cards are increasingly becoming popular among the people, the Railways has now launched Go-India Smart Card.

Introduced as a pilot project, this value proposition would cover 11 stations of the New Delhi-Mumbai and New Delhi-Kolkata sections spread over six Zonal Railways.

New Delhi has been identified as one of the centres under the pilot project for the Go-India Smart Card scheme.

Under this project, two counters — one for Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) and another for PRS (Passenger Reservation System) — have been made operational towards Ajmeri Gate side at

New Delhi station and a separate counter for issuing Go-India Smart card has also been opened.

Go-India Smart Card can be used for railway application such as Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), Passenger Reservation System (PRS) and Retiring Room (RR) counters and existing Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs).

It will be a separate card from existing ATVM smart card. Go-India smart card can be used across UTS, PRS, RR and existing ATVM of Indian Railway, but existing ATVM smart card can be used only across ATVMs of that region.

Validity of Go-India smart card is unlimited but, if no transaction are done within six months then it will be temporarily deactivated which can be activated again by paying Rs 50 as activation charge.

On Go-India Smart card at ATVMs/UTS counters, instead of giving bonus advantage, discount (5 per cent) will be given on ticket and passenger can take non-concessional season ticket through UTS counters also but as per policy, passenger will get discount on suburban journey ticket, non-suburban journey ticket up to 150 KMs, platform ticket only, miscellaneous ticket and money receipts will not be allowed through Go-India smart card.

In case of PRS/RR tickets, there is no bonus/discount advantage given at the time of booking and during booking/issuance of ticket, ticket fare/amount will be directly debit from the Go-India smart card.

The Go-India Smart card would save passengers from the hassles of coin change and queue time at counters.

Zeebuz

 

WR stations to get 450 ATVMs

Western Railway plans to instal 450 automatic ticket vending machines (ATVM) soon, WR’s general manager Hemant Kumar assured commuters at a Janata Darbar organized by Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam at Borivli station on Saturday. “We have floated tenders and ATVMs will be installed in one-and-a-half months,” he said.

At the meeting, passengers demanded for better amenities and the launch of Kandivli locals. Senior citizens also asked for fares at concessional rates. TNN

TOI

 

Central Railway to set up 288 ticket vending machines soon

In an attempt to provide relief to passengers, the Central Railway is installing 135 new Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM) on the main and harbour line stations.

These new ATVMs will replace some of the old ATVMs, which often break down creating trouble for passengers. “We have already installed 92 new ATVMs, and rest other will be in place soon,” said a senior official of CR.

Due to frequent breakdowns in the last one year, passengers have stopped using ATVMs. Hence, CR officials are hoping that the new ATVMs will help to regain confidence of passengers and reduce queues on ticket windows.

According to railway sources, the newly procured ATVMs have been improved: While making the ATVM design more user-friendly, the railways have also tried to rectify its problems. For instance, the card reader slot was placed at a low level in the old ATVMs, making it difficult for passengers to place and remove cards. In new machines, the slot is placed higher.

The railway board has already set March 2014 as the deadline to phase out Coupon Vending Machines (CVM), which has so far been the most popular alternative for suburban tickets after booking windows. Before phasing CVMs out, the railways want a sufficient number of ATVMs in place to replace them.

The official said that within six months they are going to procure more 288 ATVMs. “Preparation of the tender document is under process and soon new tenders will be invited for those,” said the official.

In 2007, the railways introduced smart cards for the first time at these ATVMs. Since then, CR has installed 250 ATVMs on its suburban stations, of which 75 were installed last year.

Hindustan Times

 

To cut queues, CR will outsource ticket sale to pvt operators, instal more ATVMs

Buying a Central Railway suburban train ticket may soon get easier with authorities deciding to shift around 50% of the load from booking windows to smart card-operated automatic ticket vending machines (ATVMs) and outsourced vendors under the Jansadharan Ticket Booking Sevaks (JTBS) scheme.

CR sells nearly 9.5 lakh tickets a day, of which 55% are through the unreserved ticketing system booking windows. “The sale of tickets from booking windows has fallen from 65% last year to 55% this year. This drop shows that more commuters are using ATVMs and JTBS,” said said Narendra Patil, senior divisional commercial manager, CR. “We aim to increase the share of ticket sale by JTBS and ATVMs to 50% by the year-end.”

An earlier survey by the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation had revealed that commuters’ major grouse was queues at booking windows—on CR, nearly 66% of commuters were unhappy with the ticketing system. But the situation has improved owing to the infrastructure upgrade, said officials. “In the last two months, 130 new ATVMs have been installed at stations, taking the total number of ATVMs on the Mumbai division to 385,” said Patil . More ATVMs are in the pipeline as the railway board had set a March 2013-deadline to phase out coupon validating machines (CVMs).

The sale of CVM booklets has also dropped in the last two years as people don’t prefer to stand in queues to buy them. Earlier, the CR had allowed out of-turn sale of these coupons.

A total of 164 JTBS operate on CR—a 50% rise since September 2012. Under JTBS, the railways permits shops to sell tickets and renew passes for a commission of Re 1 per person.

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Customised ATVMs at railway stations soon

In an experiment that could help thousands of commuters currently wasting precious time standing in ticket queues on the Western Railway, the authorities are in the process of introducing customised Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) that would cater to particularly popular stations and dispense tickets to a particular station at the touch of a button.

Currently, ATVMs dispense tickets for all stations, and customisation would require a tweaking of the software that controls the ticket-printing mechanism in the machines.

“We found that from Andheri the two most popular stations in the Up direction was Parel and Mahim and in the Down direction was Kandivali. If we can customise some ATVMs at Andheri so that they can give out tickets for these stations at the touch of a button, then we will be able to lessen the queue at ticket windows. This way, other commuters at the ticket window can get their tickets faster,” said the official.
binoo.nair@dnaindia.net

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_customised-atvms-at-railway-stations-soon_1798995

 

Rly ATVMs a hit among passengers

The automated ticket vending machines (ATVMs) installed a month ago in major railway stations under the Thiruvananthapuram division have become a huge hit among the passengers, says railways.

It was in December last week that 10 ATVMs were introduced in five stations –
Thiruvananthapuram, Kottayam, Eranakulam Junction, Aluva and Thrissur. As per the statistics, passengers bought 58,876 tickets using ATVM cards in January alone and 72,592 passengers travelled using those tickets.

The authorities are planning to introduce more ATVMs in other important stations to end the long queues for tickets. It is learnt that the more ATVMs and jansadharan ticket booking sevak (JTBS) counters and passenger reservation system (PRS) centres will be introduced in the state during the year.

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