NEW DELHI: Very soon, you would be able to pay the fare for travelling in a Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) or Cluster Scheme through a mobile application and receive an ‘e-ticket’. The same application will also tell you when the next bus on any route will reach a bus stop and if its occupancy is high or low.
State transport minister Kailash Gahlot has constituted a task force for timely coordination and implementation of exploring the options of contactless mobile ticketing inside DTC and Cluster Scheme buses, keeping in mind the safety of both passengers and conductors from Covid-19 infection. The mobile application is another part of ensuring safer public transport and is being developed by the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (IIIT-Delhi).
Also Read: EPF Withdrawal: This EPFO service may help PF regulator to contain premature money claims
A trial run to test the technology was carried out on Thursday and according to Pravesh Biyani, associate professor, IIIT-Delhi, similar trials will be held in the combined fleet of nearly 6,500 buses in Delhi. “Apart from the application being developed by Rajan Girsa, Atul Jain and Kshitij Shrivastava of IIIT-Delhi, we are also building a public information system that will be displayed at bus stops. It will not only show that the ETA of a bus is five minutes but where exactly it is and what its occupancy is,” he said.
The app will be integrated with the ‘One Delhi’ application developed by the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System Ltd for Cluster buses.
“The conversation on this started last month and we realised that personal hygiene would be important in public transport. We discussed how to eliminate ‘touch points’ and contactless and paperless ticketing will achieve that,” said Amit Bhatt, director of integrated urban transport at World Resources Institute, India and a member of the task force.
