Ticket vending machine

Ticket vending machine

Ticket vending machine

NEW DELHI: Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is planning to make almost all metro stations ‘counterless’ soon by replacing manual token counters with token vending machines (TVMs). Almost all running and upcoming Phase III stations — except those having interchange facilities with railway stations and bus terminals— don’t have manual counters and DMRC has started replacing them at many Phase I and II stations as well.A DMRC spokesperson said manual sales counters had been substituted at 118 stations by 519 TVMs and all of them were already operational.The network’s first TVM was installed at Rajiv Chowk station in 2011. “All new stations are having more and more TVMs and very few manual token counters,” DMRC’s managing director Mangu Singh told TOI. Eventually, very few stations will have manual counters, but the pace at which these will be replaced by TVMs will depend on the experience at the stations and the confidence level of passengers in using these machines, Singh added. “We are ultimately attempting to move people towards TVMs.”So far, the shift hasn’t been easy with most passengers finding it difficult to use TVMs to get tokens. At many stations, DMRC initially deployed customer care executives to guide commuters on how to use the machines. “If somebody has a problem, he can go to our customer care centres at every station,” Singh said.The measure will let DMRC deploy a reduced workforce at the stations. It will also encourage commuters, DMRC hopes, to shift to smart cards. Singh said that in the past few months, more commuters had been using smart cards.“As per the TVM policy, all stations where the daily sale of tokens is under 5,000 are provided with TVMs as it increases transparency, takes less time once people get used to it and we can avoid change issues and human error,” the spokesperson said. However, the system is subject to review at every station, keeping in mind passenger convenience and overall usage and ridership pattern, he added.