Indian Railways plans to launch an integrated smart card for the city of Mumbai, according to an official from the Centre for Railway Information Systems, the transit agency’s national information-technology arm.
The agency has begun work on a project to convert the city's existing railway ticketing smart card system, called the Automatic Ticket Vending Machine, into a city transport card usable across multiple modes of public transport, according to the official.
Such an integrated system already is active on the Delhi Metro system, according to the official. “The centre is collaborating with the Delhi Metro Railway Corp. on for the Mumbai project as well,” he says.
Mumbai already has one other integated smart card called the Go Mumbai card, provided by Mumbai-based Kaizen Engineering Systems Pvt. Ltd., that works across local train and selected bus networks. “However, the uptake of that card has not been great,” the official says. “Plus the city is getting a new Metro and Monorail network, and as such a new integrated smart is a necessity.”
The Automatic Ticket Vending Machine card has seen increased use among Mumbai’s 7 million local railway customers. Commuters use the card by inserting it into a vending machine at a local station and entering the station names. The machine then prints the ticket after deducting the fare from the smart card account, which commuters may load by paying cash at select locations or online.
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