It has been two years since the Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) were introduced for commuters of the Chennai suburban EMU network. Each ATVM costs about Rs.3.5 lakh, but the 70-odd machines that exist in 37 stations account for less than one per cent of the total daily ticket sales.
The number of tickets bought through an ATVM using smartcards is consistently on the decline since January and between March and October, the numbers came down by 50 per cent. The average daily traffic on the MRTS and suburban sections is 10 lakh passengers and long queues in front of the ticket counters are a common sight during rush hour.
Divisional Railway Manager S. Anantharaman said that the slot machines used in the ticketing counters can service nine passengers in two minutes. “The long queue is a mirage. Only if the rush becomes unmanageable, commuters will start shifting to alternatives,” he said, adding that there are commuters who do not mind waiting for even 10 minutes.
Measures such as renewal of season tickets through ATVMs and an online facility for buying season tickets would be introduced soon to encourage alternative means of ticket procurement, he added. The tickets that are generated through the slot machine are called Edmondson tickets. Such machine-punched tickets were first introduced in Great Britain in 1842. Though they were phased out there completely in 1990, the tickets continue to exist in many suburban railway systems in India, despite advancements in technology. P.S. Krishnan, a resident of T.Nagar, said since the smart card's validity period is only six months and cancellation procedures are complicated (one can cancel the smart card only at the station where it was purchased), commuters find it unviable to use a smart card.
He added that for those who use a variety of modes to commute to work, only an integrated smartcard which can be used both in bus and train will work. London's Oyster Card and Hong Kong's Octopus card, launched a few years before the Indian Railways started introducing smartcards in Chennai and Mumbai, have been hugely successful because of inter-modal integration.
As on June 2008, over 34 million Oyster cards had been issued, and more than 80 per cent of all journeys on services run by Transport for London use the Oyster card. The card can be used on the London Underground, the 8,000-odd metropolitan buses, the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), trams and some river boat services.
Mumbai is the only other Indian city that deploys ATVMs in its suburban network. It is also the first city to adopt a unique model for urban rail transit administration. The Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) was a special purpose vehicle which was created to take care of the needs of the Mumbai suburban line.
The smartcards have been hugely successful in Mumbai, with 18 per cent of the ticket sales happening out-of-counter. MRVC's Managing Director P.C.Sehgal said that all cities must decentralise the operation of urban rail systems. “We were using technology that was 85 years old and a 9-car rake, whose capacity was 1,800 passengers, carried 5,000 passengers in 1998,” he said.
According to him, the Indian Railways earns its money by transporting coal. Running a city-wide rail network that operates a train every 10 minutes requires a different type of organisation.
