RailEnquiry

The Central Railway (CR) is planning to bring down the woes of millions of commuters who use its suburban lines by trying to lessen the queues at the ticket windows.

With the passenger count reaching abnormal levels —between 53 lakhs on Raksha Bandhan day and 65 lakhs on immersion day — authorities predict that without the plan, queues would be unbearable.

The plan is to get 400 Automated Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) and 200 Jan Sadharan Ticket Booking (JTBS) counters to add to the current strength of 300 ATVMs and 174 JTBS and thereby ensure that more than half the tickets vended on the suburban railways are by these two outlets rather than ticket windows.

The JTBS is a system where shops and other establishments in civil areas can have ticket vending systems in their premises. For this, they get a rupee as commission for every ticket sold. Speaking to dna, Mukesh Nigam, CR’s divisional railway manager, said that the vending of tickets from these non-conventional outlets had touched 45%. “With this plan, we are looking at taking the level to 60%. We are good at transporting people in time and at low costs. The problem is the waiting time for tickets. That is what we are trying to rectify,” said Nigam.

With the recent decision to allow Class IV railway employees to become facilitators to help people get tickets at ATVMs, the authorities believe sale of ATVM tickets would also increase.
Published Date:  Oct 06, 2013