Railway board okays ATVMs, extension of smart cards

Commuters use an ATVM machine at Dadar station in pre-COVID times. FILE PIC

The railway board on Thursday allowed the Central Railway (CR) and Western Railway (WR) to open ticket machines with validators for suburban train commuters and extend expired smart cards as a precursor to throwing open local trains for the general public. The mobile ticketing app will, however, be opened later.

mid-day has been highlighting the need to reopening ticket machines and the ticketing app. The zonal railways had approached the board for permissions last week.

"Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) in Mumbai may be made operational for the suburban section. The date of operation, number of ATVMs and the locations shall be decided by zonal railways concerned. It may, however, be ensured that the tickets through ATVMs are issued only to eligible passengers and in no case (should) unauthorised passengers procure tickets from ATVMs," a directive from the railway board told CR and WR.

The directive also said that number of days lost due to the lockdown may be reinstated in smart cards.

Crowds at stations and in train have been surging in the past couple of weeks. Though railways said they have increased ticket windows and shifts, some busy stations remain crowded.

CR's chief public relations officer Shivaji Sutar said a date for the return of ATVMs would soon be announced.

The railways have been working with the state government to generate QR codes. They have also been parallelly working to integrate colour-coded QR e-passes in the regular UTS app.

With regard to ATVMs, touching the screens would be avoided by employing dedicated validators to issue tickets during rush hours.

Two-pass system

Appealing the government to take a stand on the reopening of local trains, the Mumbai Pravasi Sangh suggested a two-pass system - Red and Yellow, with the red one being for essential workers during rush hours and yellow one with a limited quota system per station per hour. Siddhesh Desai of Mumbai Rail Pravasi Sangh also recommended a Joint Safety Committee comprising officers from the state government, railways, members of passengers associations and transport experts to take decisions related to safety.

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