Indian Railways, to make unreserved travel easier, has come out with an app ‘utsonmobile’ to help passengers book an unreserved ticket, without waiting in long queues at railway stations.
Through the app, one can book season tickets and platform tickets too. While the app is available for suburban sections of Southern, Central, Western, Eastern, South Eastern, South Central and non-suburban sections of Northern Railway, it is available for the entire South Western Railway Zone after its launch by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal in Belagavi on February 10.
About 5 lakh people undertake unreserved journey in SWR daily.
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The app is available for free on Android and Windows platforms. It offers twin ticketing options: paperless and paper tickets. Upon registration, one can recharge the rail wallet either through UTS counters or through www.utsonmobile.indianrail.gov.in.
One has to be within a 5-km radius of the station from where the journey commences to book a paperless ticket with a GPS-enabled smartphone.
The journey has to commence within three hours of booking and one has to open “show ticket” window to show the ticket to a ticket examiner.
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The paperless ticket cannot be cancelled.
On the other hand, a paper ticket can be booked even while inside a station and a printout has to be taken from ATVM after providing mobile phone number and booking number. Paper ticket can be cancelled.
A senior official from SWR told The Hindu that all stations of SWR have been mapped with GPS and tickets can be booked from any station to any other within the SWR network. Booking tickets to or from stations outside SWR zone may be done if the station outside SWR is mapped with GPS, the official said.
The official said utsonmobile would be a boon to season ticket travellers as they need not spend a day to buy or renew the ticket. Others doing unreserved travel too would get benefited, the official added.