Travelling in Mumbai a ticketing nightmare

Suburban rail travel is expected to get difficult. While the railways want to encourage commuters to use smart cards, most of the automated ticket vending machines (ATVMs) are not maintained regularly.

In a bid to promote the use of ATVMs, the railway board issued a circular in November, urging the suburban railways to discontinue coupon validating machines (CVMs) by March 2012.

But, when DNA conducted a random survey of ATVMs on both central and western line stations on Friday, it found that most machines on central line stations, especially the major ones, are in “poor shape”. The situation on western line stations was better as most ATVMs were operational.

“If CVMs are shut down, there will be a serious problem. If the railways are serious about promoting ATVMs, their maintenance should be taken up as a priority because many of them have developed glitches. Even uniformed facilitators can be seen at just a few stations,’’ complained Chandrakant Sawant, member of a railway passenger body.

CVMs have been popular among commuters since the launch in 1998, because commuters find it easy to just punch in the coupon and catch the train.

But, as the CVMs are not linked to the ticketing server, there is a problem in accounting. In fact, 10% of the total tickets sold on Central Railway and 18% on Western Railway are done through CVMs.

As an alternative, the railways had launched the ATVM card, designed by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), in 2006.

Though the all-weather maintenance of these machines has been a problem from Day One, the railway ministry wants to encourage their use as the sales can be accounted for.

CRIS chief general manager AK Jain said they were not responsible for the maintenance of ATVMs, but it was the job of the railways.

CR spokesperson said that they will take up the complaint of non-functioning ATVMs with the commercial department.
To encourage the use of smart cards, the railways have also decided to post uniformed facilitators near the ATVMs.