Title - ATVMs to replace CVMs for Central Railway commuters in 2014

As the Central Railway (CR) gears up to do away with 300 coupon validating machines (CVMs) after March 2014, colourful coupon booklets used by commuters on suburban railways will probably be a thing of the past. This will mark the end of the 15-year-old ticketing method.

CR is contemplating handing over extra booklets to Western Railway (WR), which plans to integrate the standalone box machines with unreserved ticketing system (UTS) to prevent fraudulent practices and improve the accounting of coupon tickets.

A senior railway officer said, "The WR has asked CR to hand over excess coupon booklets to them after March 2014. If the Board does not give another extension, CR will hand over the booklets after doing away with the machines."

Installed for the first time in 1998 on an experimental basis, CVMs were one of the most popular ticketing systems on CR till two years ago. In 2011, the contribution of CVMs to ticketing was twice that of Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs), since the latter were perceived to be less user-friendly. However, after the Railway Board issued the directive to discontinue non-networked systems, CR took several measures to popularise ATVMs.

Some of these measures were positioning facilitators at ATVMs to disburse tickets to non-smart card commuters, installing signboards on all machines to explain steps of purchasing tickets from the machines, and introducing queue system to purchase coupon booklets. In 2011 CR sold 3 lakh tickets daily through coupon booklets. Now it has come down to 50,000 per day.

Atul Rane, Chief Public Relations Officer, CR said, "Though CVMs were a popular mode of ticketing for commuters, the machines were non-networked. Resorting to fraudulent means was easy. So replacing thosr machines was considered necessary. We have taken steps to replace this mode by providing ATVMs, JTBS and new UTS, which are more user-friendly."Following the Railway Board directive in 2011, CR and WR have repeatedly asked for extensions in 2012 and 2013, saying that the machines were extremely popular among commuters.