IIM students’ study finds flaws in rly ticketing system

AMRITSAR: A study, carried out by students of the Indian Institute of Management, Amritsar — on railway ticketing system at the city railway station points out need for more staff and replacement of automatic ticket vending machines (ATVM) with cash and card operated ticket vending machines (CoTVM).

The ticket counters at the city railway station usually witness long queues of passengers. Photo: Sunil Kumar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 22

A study, carried out by students of the Indian Institute of Management, Amritsar — on railway ticketing system at the city railway station points out need for more staff and replacement of automatic ticket vending machines (ATVM) with cash and card operated ticket vending machines (CoTVM).

A group of management students — Arun Kumar, Chetan Bhardwaj, Rohit Chaturvedi and Shubham Khandelwal — conducted the study as part of their project in operations management course with Neeraj Bhanot, Assistant Professor, Quantitative Methods and Operations Management). The students in different groups made regular visits in a period of six months from October 2018 to March 2019 with support of railway officials, including Amrit Singh, Director, Amritsar railway station.

Shubham Khandelwal said, “We began our study by conducting a basic survey on the ticketing facilities. Even the UTS application to book rail tickets needs to enhance its features, such as improvements in live updates of the trains, the R-wallet system. Many of the passengers board train without ticket.”

As per the study, around 16,000 passengers travel daily in the unreserved section of trains, out of which 2,500 passengers go without tickets. These young management graduates stresses on the need for more staff, and cash and card-operated ticket vending machines to meet the menace.

Arun Kumar said, “We came across long queues at the ticket counter. Cash and card-operated ticket vending machines will reduce the rush at ticket counters. There is a need to hire 10-12 train ticket examiners (TTEs) to compensate the loss due to people boarding train without a ticket.”

Station Director Amrit Singh said, “The city railway station had invited students of the IIM, Amritsar, to study different aspects. This is one of the studies. According to our knowledge, there are people traveling without tickets in trains, but the number quoted by them is quite high. We are already coming up with solutions.”