A single card that commuters can use on both buses and the metro is in the offing. With the East-West corridor fully functional and gaining popularity, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMTC) are planning to introduce smart cards.
The timing is right as the BMTC finally has its Intelligent Transport Solution (ITS) in place. “We are ready with a Common Mobility card, which can be read by any card reader. This model has been adopted by the Union government for various projects. We will introduce this in a month,” said Ekroop Caur, Managing Director, BMTC.
For integration with metro card readers, it will take some amount of technical modification, as the systems used by the two operators are different.
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“We need to integrate both models and have started talking to the BMTC,” said U.A. Vasanth Rao, spokesperson, BMRCL.
The entire process might take a few months but the decision to introduce these cards is final, officials say. “It will happen and the talks are about how to take this forward,” Ms. Caur added.
At present, BMRCL already has a few types of smart cards. It has also tied up with two banks to provide debit/metro travel cards. Sale of smart cards was up by 6,000 in the first two days of the launch of the completed Purple line last week.
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Purple line
Average daily commuters since launch: 98,000
Average revenue:
Rs. 40 lakh
According to officials, the number of commuters who took the metro on Saturday was 1,21,291