Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot inspects phase-2 trial of E-Ticketing App in buses

Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot on Friday inspected the phase-2 trials of the contactless e-ticketing App in Cluster buses. He, along with the officials from the Transport Department conducted a real-time inspection of the App on route 429 and used it to purchase the ticket.

The Delhi Transport Department has started the phase-2 trial of contactless e-ticketing App 'Chartr' in its Cluster buses. The trial is being conducted by a special Task Force constituted for this purpose by the Transport Minister which consists of expert members from Transport Department, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-D), Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System Ltd. (DIMTS), Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and World Resources Institute (WRI).

The App now supports more new features and have rectified all the shortcomings noticed during the first phase of the trial.

The mobile e-ticketing App has been developed with the technical support of IIIT-Delhi. The phase-1 trial of the 'Chartr' App was conducted for three days on all cluster buses of route number 473.

A user can also see all stoppages of a bus and can view by typing the name of the stop, all the buses arriving in the next half an hour with details like Expected Time of Arrival (ETA). The ETA also gets updated real-time during the passenger's journey in the bus. Once the passenger reaches their destination as entered in the App, the ticket becomes invalid.

In case a user knows the ticket fare, he/she can also open the App and click on "BY FARE", scan the QR Code of the bus, select Buy New Ticket and choose the payment option to get the ticket. In case a user knows the route, source and destination, he/she can click on "By Destination", select the Bus Route and Source stop, select destination stop, click on Buy and Scan Bus QR code and choose the payment option to pay and get the ticket.

A user can buy up to three tickets for a journey. The App automatically suggests Pink Ticket (free) for female passenger based on the gender entered by the user. A female passenger can buy up to 1 Pink Ticket for each journey. The App now supports both Hindi and English languages.

Following the inspection, the Transport Minister said "Now that we've increased testing and is witnessing another spike in cases, an App-based contactless ticketing is crucial in minimizing surface contact. This is a very simple and smooth process, and I could book my ticket in a few seconds. I'm extremely happy to note that, within five days of starting the trial, 6 per cent of total ticketing on the selected routes, are being done through the App now."

"It is particularly encouraging to see the response from female passengers, who account for more than 75 per cent of total tickets issued via this App. We are also starting a trial in DTC buses alongside the installation of CCTV, GPS, Pc buttons in buses. I can assure you that as our CM has mentioned, in another two months, Delhi will lead the country's major cities in safe, tech-enabled Public Transport system," added Gahlot.

The ongoing 14 day trial of this App covers 332 cluster buses on 14 routes. Apart from these cluster buses, the trial will also be extended to 29 DTC buses on route number 534.

So far around 20,000 tickets have been purchased through the App, out of which, more than 75 per cent are pink tickets purchased by female passengers.

In order to understand and address passenger requirements, Passenger Opinion Survey was conducted alongside the trial. 96-98 per cent passengers seemed very satisfied with the App, and assured continued usage of the App.

Meanwhile, Prof Pravesh Biy, App Developer said that the app is receiving a good response and there is an increase of 10 per cent in the purchase to tickets through this application.

"Initially, it was operational only on one route but today we are running it on 30 routes and it is getting a good response as there is an increase in the percentage of tickets sold through the app. Every day it is increasing by 10 per cent. Over 4000 tickets are being booked by this app. Last time there was some payment issue in this app but now there is no issue in purchasing ticket," Biy told .

The App can be downloaded from Google Play store which is now available as a full version. One can also WhatsApp ''Hi'' on 9910096264 to get the App URL.

( With inputs from ANI )