The Railway Minister Shri
Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu launched following IT enabled passenger services through
video conferencing from New Delhi:
1.
Paperless Unreserved Ticketing through Mobile
Phones on suburban stations over Central Railway
2.
Paperless Platforms tickets at Chhatrapati
Shivaji Terminus, Dadar Central, Panvel, Thane and Lokmanya Tilak Terminus,
Andheri, Mumbai Central, Borivali, Dadar Western, Dadar Central, Vasai Road,
Bandra, New Delhi and Nizamudding stations on Northern Railway, Western Railway
and Central Railway
3.
Paperless Season tickets on suburban sections of
Western Railway, Central Railway and New Delhi-Palwal Section of Northern
Railway.
4.
Currency, Coin - cum - Card operated Automatic
Ticket Vending Machines at various suburban stations on Central Railway and
Western Railway.
5.
Train Enquiry Mobile Application on iOS
platform.
On
this occasion ,Chairman Railway Board, Shri AK Mital and other Board Members,
Additional Member(C&IS) Shri Mohd. Jamshed, MD CRIS Ms Vandana Nanda were
among those present at the programme.
Speaking on the occasion , Minister Of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhu said “Moving
ahead in the direction of making Digital India, today, I am happy to inaugurate
the System for Paperless Unreserved Tickets, Paperless Season Tickets and
Paperless Platform Tickets through Mobile Phones, in the Mumbai Suburban system
of WR and CR and Delhi – Palwal section of Northern Railway from today.
About
50 Currency-cum-coin-cum-card Ticket Vending Machines (CoTVMs) are now
functional over various stations.
I am
also happy to inaugurate the Currency and Coin Operated Ticket Vending Machines
(CoTVMs), being installed at various stations of Central and Western Railway.
All these initiatives were promised in my Budget Speech this year.
Another
initiative that is being launched today is the Train Enquiry Mobile App on the
iOS that is Apple platform. This app has been working very well on the Android
and Windows based mobile phones and now will give good facilities for Apple phone users also.
The
paperless Unreserved Ticketing System is a boon for passengers traveling in
suburban areas, since it will drastically reduce the time a passenger takes at
the station, waiting in queue to buy a ticket. It will enable “Mission 5
minutes” (not more than 5 minutes to buy a ticket) to become a reality.
Railways will also benefit from this innovation because they will be able to
cope with higher ticket sales with lower investments.
.
The
Paperless Ticketing service is already running in some sections of Mumbai
Western Railway and Delhi. With the latest launch, this service will be
available across all of Mumbai’s suburban sections on both Central and Western
Railways. This system is based on the “UTS on Mobile” app, which has a “Railway
Wallet” feature. While this system has been introduced to increase passenger
convenience, a few safeguards have been built-in to prevent misuse of the
tickets. Firstly, the tickets cannot be forwarded from one phone to another.
Second, one cannot buy the ticket after starting one’s journey. A system of
distinct daily colour codes, embedded QR codes, and sync feature has been
devised to ease the work of the ticket examiners, while providing unparalleled
convenience to the users.
A very
useful feature added today is that of buying Paperless Season Tickets and
Paperless Platform Tickets through the Mobile App. The Paperless Season Ticket
feature will be particularly useful for the suburban passengers, large numbers
of whom travel on Season Tickets.
Another innovative system being introduced for
Mumbai suburban section of Western Railway and Central Railway is the Cash/Smart
Card operated Ticket Vending Machine (CoTVM), which
is a self-service kiosk for passengers to buy their own unreserved tickets. It
has a user-friendly graphical interface that can be used by all passengers. The
machine takes currency notes and coins in addition to smart cards for payment.
This will save the passengers’ precious time, and will ease the pressure on the
Railway administration as well, enabling them to give better service to the
passengers. Again, security features”
Procedure
for booking of Paperless Unreserved Journey tickets, Season tickets and
Platform tickets.
Download the Mobile application
from Google Play Store or Windows Store.
·
Register by providing Mobile Number, Name, City,
Train Type, Class, Ticket Type, Number of Passengers and Frequently travel
routes.
·
Payment has to be made using R-Wallet. Upon
successful registration, R-Wallet will be opened with Zero Balance.
·
Value can be topped up in R-Wallet by tendering
cash across the nominated counter and also online on website
“utsonmobile.indianrail.gov.in”.
·
Passenger can book single Journey ticket,
Platform ticket as well as season tickets by choosing appropriate option in the
App.
·
The Smart Phone should be GPS enabled to book
single journey ticket and Platform ticket.
Functioning
Of CoTVM
Cash/Smart card operated ticket vending machine
(CoTVM) is a self-operated kiosk, which can be used by passengers to buy
unreserved tickets through currency/coins/smart cards and to recharge smart
cards. These kiosks have easy graphical interface for ticket transaction so
that the user can operate these machines themselves. The kiosk accepts
currency/coin of all glued/taped/coloured notes and accepts currency notes of
Gandhi series. CoTVMs will reduce queue lengths at existing ticket counters by
providing an alternate unmanned ticketing solution and mode of payment.
CoTVMs
have the following functions.
1. Issue of non-concessional second class
journey tickets for non-suburban section and second/first class journey/return
tickets for suburban section.
2. Issue of platform
tickets.
3. Renewal of
non-concessional season tickets.
4. Recharge of smart cards in denominations
of Rs. 20/-, Rs. 50/-, Rs. 100/- and Rs. 500/-.
CoTVM
consists of:
1. Thin Client
2. Thermal Printer
3. Touch screen
4. RFID reader
5. Cash Validator with 15
notes escrow
6. Coin Validator with 10
coins escrow
7. The cash box has the
capacity to hold 25,000 notes and 3,000 coins.
The
basic difference between automatic ticket vending machine (ATVM) installed upto
now and CoTVM is that ATVM can issue tickets through smart cards only whereas
CoTVM can issue tickets using cash (notes & coins) and smart cards. It can
also be used for recharging these smart cards.
Security
of CoTVM
The
machine has two access doors, both at the front side of the machine and is
equipped with mechanical & electronic locks. One door is used for
maintenance activity by the service engineer. The second door is for accessing
the cash box and is integrated with an alarm system. The alarm will go off
whenever the door is opened by any unauthorized person. The machine has a cash
box with electro mechanical lock at the bottom. Whenever the authorized
supervisor wants to open the cash box to takeout shift cash, he/she will gain
access to the machine by using a supervisory smart card and his password. After
entering the password, machine will print the Daily Trains Cash-cum-Summary
Book (DTC) for accountal of the collected cash.
Commissioning
of CoTVM
On
01.09.2015, 6 CoTVMs were inaugurated at New Delhi of Northern Railway and 08
CoTVMs at Sealdah & Howrah stations of Eastern Railway. So far, total 48
CoTVMs have been commissioned over Northern Railway and Eastern Railway.
Train Enquiry Mobile
Application on iOS platform
Centre
for Railway Information System (CRIS), the IT arm of Indian Railways, has
enhanced the train enquiry system by developing mobile apps. Mobile app for
Windows 8 and Android were launched earlier and are widely used by rail
passengers. Now one more step ahead, mobile app for iOS platform has also been
developed and ready for launch. It has now become easier for the rail
passengers to track information on expected arrival and departure timings of a
particular train and other information.
National
Train Enquiry System (NTES) is the base system which provides information to
public about train running on near real time through various interfaces like
nationwide unique rail enquiry number 139, website (www.trainenquiry.com), mobile interfaces, Touch Screens, Face
to Face enquiry and Display Boards at stations.
One
of the best features of the app is ‘spot your train’ which provides information
such as its current position, expected time of arrival and departure at a
particular station. Other features are ‘train schedule’, ‘train between
station’, ‘live station’, ‘information on cancelled, rescheduled & diverted
trains’. ‘Live Station’ query provides list of trains expected to arrive
at/depart from any station in next 2 or 4 hours.
Thus,
CRIS has made available train enquiry app for three most commonly used mobile
platforms viz. Windows, Android and iOS.
The
NTES app is available as a free download from App store.
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AKS/MKV/MN/RV
