Skip queues, buy metro tickets at stn gates, stairs
Times of India | 6 October 2024
Kolkata: Here’s some good news for pandal-hoppers. The Metro Railway has introduced hand-held terminals for commuters, which will act as mobile booking counters, enabling them to procure tickets even at the non-ticketing areas on the station premises. They will not have to wait in long queues at the booking counters.
They can even procure the tickets at the station gates or any other strategic spot.
Here’s how. Metro staff members will be waiting at various strategic locations with the small devices — that resemble the point-of-sale or POS machines — from which QR-coded paper tickets will be printed out after a commuter pays the fare. The facility has been introduced on trial basis.
“Hand-held terminals are actually wireless devices commonly used in container terminals at various locations and processes, at the waterside to register load and discharge. They are also used for automatic fare collection purposes,” a Metro official said.
With the help of hand-held terminals, commuters can buy the tickets on the staircases, in front of the luggage scanners, the automatic fare collection gates, entry gates of the stations, the corridors and so on of different Metro stations. The passengers will have to pay in cash to the Metro personnel carrying the hand-held terminal and the latter will scroll down and tap on the required destination for the generation of the QR-coded ticket.
Depending on the footfall or the rush, Metro staff carrying hand-held terminals will be made available. “At least two or three such personnel will be moving around in each of the crowded stations,” the Metro official said. For now, 23 hand-held terminals will be used on a trial basis, he said. The terminals can also check the validity of a QR-code based ticket and other details.