Rlys to have airport-like contactless ticketing

July 23, 2020 21:46

The railways will move towards contactless ticketing like at airports with QR code-enabled tickets, which will be scanned on handheld devices and mobile phones at the stations and on the trains, a senior official of the national transporter said on Thursday.

Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav said while 85 per cent train tickets are currently being booked online, a QR code will also be available for those buying tickets from counters.

"We have introduced a QR code system, which will be given on tickets. If one buys online, the code will be provided on the ticket. Even on window tickets, where one gets a physical ticket, a text message will be sent to the passenger's mobile phone, which will have a link, and the QR code will be displayed when the link is touched.

"Then the TTE at the stations or on the trains, either with their hand-held equipment or through their mobile phones which will have a QR application, will be able to scan the code and immediately capture the details of the passengers. So the ticketing system will be completely contactless," he said.

Yadav said the railways is not planning to go completely paperless as of now, but will considerably reduce its use by facilitating online booking of reserved, unreserved and platform tickets.

He also said an online recharge facility of suburban cards and Kolkata Metro has been enabled. A pilot project of contactless ticket-checking with an airport-like check-in for all passengers entering the station has been introduced at Prayagraj Junction of North Central Railway.

A spokesperson of the North Central Railway explained how the process works at the Prayagraj station.

As a passenger enters the station premises, the QR code of his ticket is scanned through a mobile application and this gets updated in the software's database. The time of scanning the QR code also gets updated in the application.

The station has check-in counters to minimise the exposure of the checking staff to the passengers. The QR code is scanned and the thermal screening of passengers initiated at these counters, the official said.

He added that the onboard ticket-checking staff also gets information on passengers simultaneously -- all information is provided to their handheld machines, including a coach-wise display with the number of berths, unbooked berths and number of boarding passes. -- PTI

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