Title - Minimum-fare ticket windows at Andheri station

MUMBAI: In an innovation to reduce the long queues at ticket booking offices, Western Railway (WR) has set aside two booking windows at Andheri station —one on the east side and another on the west—to dispense tickets exclusively for minimum-fare journey. The minimum suburban train fare is Rs 4.

Tickets up to Mahim in south and Kandivali in north are available.

Every day, nearly 50,000 tickets are sold at Andheri station from 23 booking offices. Reportedly, 5% of these tickets are for minimum-fare journey.

"Purging these commuters from the booking windows will reduce the queues," said a senior official.

According to WR officials, most of the tickets that are purchased at booking counters are for minimum-slab distances.If the experiment at Andheri station succeeds, WR has plans to introduce the system at 10 more stations on the suburban network.

An official said, "We may to implement it at Elphinstone Road, Mira Road, Goregaon, Borivli, Virar, Nalasopara, Kandivli, Dadar and Bandra, which accounts for nearly 59% of the total WR ticket sales."

WR also plans to develop Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM) that will dispense minimum-fare tickets at a single click.

A WR official said, "At present, commuters have to first select the destination, number of commuters and whether it will be single journey or return journey ticket. This takes around 1 minute 30 seconds. If a minimum-fare dispensing ticket machine is developed, the entire transaction would be done in seconds."

The official said, "It is yet to be decided if the machine would be currency-operated or smart card-operated or a combination of both."