Lucknow: There is good news for the travellers of city of Nawabs as they will only need to swipe a smart cards now to get railway ticket because northern railway has decided to fit cashless Cash Operated Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (COATVMs) by end of March at Charbagh railway station.
Speaking to media persons, some daily visitors to the city said it would be great for them as they use to travel with minimum cash.
An official from of a Charbagh station said, around six COATVMs will be installed in the second hall of the ticket booking at the railway premises and to use the machine, traveller will need to obtain the smart card from counter number five and can recharge it from Rs 10-5,000 as per usage.
The machine will give only unreserved tickets and passengers can also get platforms tickets by swiping the card, all though there is no limit of travel.
A traveller who works with a multi-national company, Mahesh Singh use to travel between Kanpur and Lucknow daily said, “I lose one hour daily in queue for ticket and this is good news for me as I can save time and go cashless.”
Another traveller, who is a Marketing manager in a private firm Smriti, has to travel every alternate day to new destinations said, “There are ATVMs at Charbagh which demand cash for every ticket and passenger often face technical errors but swipe card a better option.”
A senior citizen who is believed to be of 78-year-old Gurpreet Kaur was standing in a queue for a platform ticket said, every year railway comes up with good schemes for senior citizens but their employees never pay attention so the benefit of such schemes becomes worthless.
Divisional commercial manager M L Meena said that the smart card will be valid for six months and if passenger does not use it within given time, the balance amount will lapse.
She further added that railways have also appointed two supervisors to take care of the machine in case of technical error for day and night shifts.