Chennai: Southern Railway is planning to install 254 additional Automatic Ticket Vending Machines at various railway stations across six divisions for the convenience of passengers and ease of ticketing. Out of these 254 ATVMs, the Thiruvananthapuram division will get 50 and Palakkad 38.
This is in addition to 99 ATVMs that are already functional at various railway stations of Southern Railway which include 15 ATVMs in Palakkad Division and 14 in Thiruvananthapuram.
In an endeavour to offer a passenger-friendly user interface for UTS ticket booking and decongest ticket counters, Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs), the touchscreen-based ticketing kiosks were introduced by Indian Railways.
QR code-based Payment- a New feature on ATVMs
ATVMs are touchscreen-based ticketing kiosks enabled with a user-friendly interface. With the recently incorporated QR code-UPI-based payment facility, payment can be made for transactions done on ATVMs using mobile payment apps and the ticket gets popped out instantly. This new feature thus aids quick booking of suburban and non-suburban unreserved tickets, Platform tickets and renewal of Season tickets.
Other Features of ATVMs:
· Fully automatic & tickets issued at the touch of the screen by the user.
· Tickets can be purchased for the destination available on the map.
· Tickets can be purchased with smart cards and through UPI.
· The stationery used for printing tickets is thermal paper.
· Enabled for the issue of unreserved journey and platform tickets in both Sub-urban and Non- sub-urban stations.
· Renewal of monthly and quarterly season tickets can be done in ATVMs.
· 3% bonus is given to passengers utilizing R-wallet for obtaining tickets.
· Recharge of ATVM Smart Card can be made online by accessing the UTS Mobile ticketing website
Benefits of ATVMs:
· Fully automated user-friendly interface even for first-time users.
· Helps passengers to avoid standing in a long queue to get their journey tickets.
· ATVM application is so simple and easy to use even by a common man.
· ATVM application is available in tri-lingual (Regional, Hindi, English) making it more user friendly
· Cashless transactions, payment through UPI can be done in ATVMs
Southern Railway had appealed to passengers to extensively use ATVMs commissioned at railway stations and UTS Mobile App for ease of booking Unreserved, Season and Platform tickets.