The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Ticket vending machine for suburban trains

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 06, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Ticket vending machine for suburban trains

S. Vydhianathan

It can issue tickets to all destinations on Arakkonam and Gummidipundi sections It can issue tickets to all destinations on Arakkonam and Gummidipundi sections

CHENNAI: Chennai Railway Division has installed two multipurpose automatic vending machines at Moore Market Complex (MMC) for sale of railway tickets to various suburban stations.

With increasing traffic on suburban sections, additional ticket counters at suburban stations are not enough to meet the demand. For example, at MMC alone more than 18,000 suburban tickets are sold every day. During peak hours it takes a long time to get a ticket, holding up passengers, who are in a hurry to catch the train. The booking clerks are also under enormous pressure. The administration decided to go for automatic vending of tickets to meet the increasing demand.

The Chennai Division installed two state-of-the-art multipurpose ticket vending machines in MMC, which can issue tickets to all destinations on the Chennai-Arakkonam and Chennai-Gummidipundi sections on an experimental basis.

The automated unit is fully coin operated and dispenses change. It accepts only one rupee and five rupee coins. Detailed instructions are given on the face of the machine both in English and Tamil. It can print, at a time, tickets for four persons to the same destination. For example the fare to Basin Bridge Junction is Rs 4 and the passenger can insert either four one rupee coins or a five-rupee coin. If a five-rupee coin, one rupee is returned.

According to a railway official, unlike automatic platform ticket vending machines, which can be tampered with, it is difficult to do so here.

The machine does not accept any coins or objects other than Re 1 and Rs 5 coins.

A high-speed ticket issuing machine, it can issue 600 tickets an hour.

The official said the machine was slowly becoming popular with commuters.

Ticket sales through the machines, which were of the order of 500 a day, have increased to about 900 a day now.

But one disadvantage with the machine was that it takes only one and five-rupee coins.

The machines at MMC are sponsored by Indian Overseas Bank and Syndicate Bank.

One more machine will be installed at Mambalam soon, according to the official.

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