Chandigarh
Commuters on the Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU) buses, both local and long-route ones, will soon be able to make digital payments for tickets in addition to cash payments.
The UT transport department has initiated the process of introducing electronic ticket vending machines compatible with digital payments.
Confirming the development, Uma Shankar Gupta, additional secretary, UT transport department, said, “The department has floated tenders inviting vendors to provide electronic ticket vending machines. Conductors will be equipped with these machines and passengers will be able to pay through their debit or credit cards by swiping of these cards.”
The CTU has more than 600 buses, of which 361 are on the local and suburban routes, while 153 ply interstate routes covering Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Uttar Pradesh ,Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir.
AUTOMATIC FARE COLLECTION
In the first lot, the CTU has invited applicants for supply design, development, implementation, maintenance of 325 electronic ticketing machines. The firms are to provide software for front-end and back-end firmware also. The machines will be part of the automatic fare collection systems.
“The machines will be procured by the CTU on monthly rent basis. The successful bidder firm will have to provide the machines in perfectly usable condition on a daily basis. The firm will have to pay a fine in case the machines develop any snag or don’t function properly,” added Gupta.
The earlier ticket vending machines that were owned by the CTU are being replaced in a phased manner. These machines developed repeated snags and did not facilitate digital payments.
