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A file photo of an Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVM) at Mangaluru Central Railway Station.
| Photo Credit: H S Manjunath
Southern Railway is planning to install 254 additional Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) across its network in six divisions, including three machines at Mangaluru Central Railway Station, in coastal Karnataka, coming under Palakkad division, for the convenience of passengers for ease of booking tickets.
While Chennai division gets 96 ATVMs, Tiruchchirapalli gets 12, Madurai 46, Thiruvananthapuram 50, Palakkad 38 and Salem division gets 12 additional machines. These machines are in addition to 99 ATVMs that are functional at various railway stations, including 34 in Chennai (Tamil Nadu) division, 16 in Madurai (Tamil Nadu), 15 in Palakkad (Kerala), 14 in Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), 13 in Salem (Tamil Nadu) and 7 in Tiruchchirappalli (Tamil Nadu).
Advanced features
Indian Railways had introduced ATVMs about eight years ago to enable passengers to book unreserved tickets with ease, and to decongest ticket counters.
These touch-screen based ticketing kiosks with a user-friendly interface now come with QR-code and UPI-based payment facility wherein payments may be made through mobile phone payment apps while thermal paper tickets come out immediately. The new feature thus aids quick booking of suburban and non-suburban unreserved tickets, platform tickets and renewal of monthly and quarterly season pass tickets.
Other features include fully automatic ticket issuing system, user-friendly interface, 3% bonus to passengers using R-wallet for booking tickets, recharging ATVM smart card through UTS mobile ticketing website.
The system helps passengers avoid standing in queues to buy unreserved tickets. They may transact in three languages — regional, Hindi and English — on ATVMs.
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