CR records 237 pc rise in sale of mobile tickets after sustained awareness drive
The Central Railway has witnessed a 237 per cent rise in the sale of train tickets booked through its unreserved ticketing system (UTS) app. Railway officials said the percentage of ticket booking has increased due to awareness campaigns conducted by railway employees and encouraging commuters standing in ticket queues to book tickets on the UTS app.
“We run awareness drives about the application on a regular basis, where our staff stands near the ticketing counter during peak hours, telling people about the UTS application and self-ticketing zones,” said a senior railway official, adding that the five per cent bonus on every recharge to the R-wallet, a scheme in place till August 23, has helped in attracting commuters to use the application.
“In June 2018, nearly 28 lakh commuters booked tickets on the UTS app compared to June 2017, when only 8.57 lakh commuters did so,” said Sunil Udasi, Chief Public Relations Officer, CR.
A CR official said that commuters faced problems booking tickets within 20 metres of the station. The issue was resolved with self-ticketing zones being installed at various stations. However, there is still a long way to go before the application can be considered a success, as issues like pasting the poster with the QR code to be scanned by commuters at the right places and ensuring that is it not damaged over time are still major hurdles for the railways to sort out, apart from popularising the application further.
On July 3, around 1,90,000 journey and ticket sales were sold by CR through the app. Earlier, on June 16, the number had touched 1,64,000, which was four per cent of the total passengers that day. It is the highest number of tickets sold by them since the launch of the app in 2015. “Ever since we started this drive, ticket sales using the mobile app have touched 4 per cent and the cumulative growth in ticket sales has touched 1.5 per cent, which earlier used to be less tham 0.15 per cent," said a CR official.