Railway Ticketing Process
Last night I was at Tambaram railway station to receive one of our guest. It took nearly 30 minutes for me to take a couple of platform tickets. There were more than 300 people standing on 3 queue to get tickets - platform , local train and the outstation ones. There were more than 50% of the counters closed. No Person in the railway department is bothered to open the closed counter to speed up the process. In one of the queue in which I was standing was very slow due to the slowness of the machine.
The lady in the counter uses a separate calculator to find out how much she needs to return to the person who gave a Rs 500 /= for a 270/- + ticket. Can’t we upgrade the software to do this job. This will cut short a lot a time. I believe we have this in every other software used in super market today. The best part is that I gave three two rupee coins to take a couple of platform tickets which costs Rs 3/- each and told her that I need two tickets. She pushed the Coins towards her coin tray and asked , “You want one ticket right?”. It was already 8 PM. I am not sure how long she is working in the counter or she is not interested in the job itself.
There was a machine which can provide local and Platform tickets. But one need to use only railway card to purchase tickets. Can’t we make the machine work with the Credit card and coins? That will reduce a lot of manual work and also reduce the waiting time.
