The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : SWR to offer video enquiry system at seven stations

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Saturday, Mar 22, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

SWR to offer video enquiry system at seven stations

Anil Kumar Sastry

The facility will be offered at Cantonment station in a week
It helps passengers to directly interact with railway personnel

BANGALORE: In an effort to offer round-the-clock passenger information within the available resources, the Bangalore Division of the South Western Railway (SWR) will offer video enquiry facility at seven important stations in its jurisdiction, including Bangalore Cantonment, Yelahanka and Krishnarajapuram in the city.

To begin with, the facility will be offered at the Cantonment station within a week.

Manual enquiry

The SWR will shortly offer manual enquiry system at the Yeshwanthpur Station, which has grown into another major train travel hub of Bangalore. The seven stations, where video enquiry facility will be offered, are not eligible to have manual enquiry system as per their “grade.”

While this facility is already available in Bangalore City and Yeshwanthpur Stations, other stations that will have video enquiry facility are Mandya, Hosur, Dharmapuri and Hindupur.

Video enquiry system helps a passenger to directly interact with the railway personnel, who will be operating from the control room in Bangalore. Both the controller and the passenger can see each other’s face and interact.

Information

A whole range of passenger information, including arrival and departure of trains, availability of berths and other facilities will be offered in this system.

A passenger desirous of getting information has to enter the kiosk at the station and make a call. The controller at the control room will come online and provide the required information.

Divisional Railway Manager Mahesh Mangal told The Hindu that video enquiry system was adopted to exploit the strides made in the information technology sector. Many passengers may not be comfortable to use the touch-screen kiosk, which have been provided in almost all important stations in the division. The video enquiry system is handled by two controllers during day time and one controller during the night.

If need arises, more number of controllers will be deputed, he added.

Dual system

The manual enquiry system being offered at Yeshwanthpur will be on Tumkur Road entrance of the Station as this entrance is being used by a large number of passengers, while video enquiry system is available on Yeshwanthpur entrance.

Mr. Mangal said nearly 50,000 passengers — outbound and inbound — make use of Yeshwanthpur Station, which handles 24 pairs of trains in a day.

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