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/-.
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.
Source : PIB Release, 09.10.2015
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