Kolkata Metro to overhaul ticketing system in 6 months

The ticketing system of Kolkata's Metro Railway could be back on track in another six months, with a new infrastructure, on the lineS of the Delhi Metro, in place.

The Indian Railways' Information Technology arm, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), has given the task of creating a new blueprint for the mass transit system which has been unable to cope with an increase in ridership after its extension last year.

Subsequent to the opening of a 5.8 km-long stretch in August 2009, part of the 8.6 km southern extension project that was sanctioned in 1999-2000, the ridership of the Metro Railway has gone up by at least one lakh. However, the growth in earnings has not been commensurate primarily due to the fact that the ticketing infrastructure is in a shambles.

The new system will not have the magnetic stripe tickets and the existing smartcard mechanism will be phased out. Instead, a basic solution comprising multiple and single journey tickets based on RFID (radio-frequency identification) smartcards and tokens are likely to be put into place. Moreover, the 132 automatic gates that currently service the system are likely to be replaced by 280 retractable flap barrier gates.

The blueprint prepared by CRIS entails the setting up of an interconnected help-desk within the Kolkata Metro for the registration of complaints during operational hours. It has been mooted that the maximum time for initial response to reported problems in the system failure should not exceed 15 minutes.Additionally, a research and development (R&D) centre is expected to be established which will be used for integrating the new hardware components, such as automatic gates, with the software programme that CRIS will prepare for the system. The software programme will control all exit and entry operations, audible alarms as well as the information panels on the automatic gates.

Once CRIS identifies the vendor for supplying the automatic gates, which should happen over the next month, it has stipulated that the complete commissioning of the system should be done within six months.

Unlike the collapse of the ticketing infrastructure that marred the inauguration of the southern extension project last year, hopefully, the new system will be operationalised before the final stretch is opened.