New Delhi: The transport department of the Delhi government said on Sunday that it is all set to introduce contactless e-ticketing services in all the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS) Ltd buses plying in the city. Accordingly, the department would initiate a final trial of its e-ticketing app ‘Chartr’ from Monday.
The Delhi government had announced to introduce e-ticketing facilities in its all buses in August 2020.
“The Delhi government is all set for its one-month final trial phase of the contactless e-ticketing services which would cover all the routes of DIMTS buses. The trial of the ‘Chartr’ app will be extended to 3,760 Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses by March 31,” the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) claimed.
The trial will be conducted by a joint team involving the Delhi transport department, DTC, DIMTS, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology and World Resources Institute (WRI). The mobile e-ticketing app has been developed with the technical support of Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi.
The CMO said, “E-ticketing in DIMTS was started in August 2020 on route number 473. The total number of buses was increased to 550 thereafter in a phased manner. In DTC, the trial of this online ticketing app was started in September 2020 on route 534 in Gazipur and Hasanpur depots. At present, e-ticketing is live on a trial basis in all the buses and routes of the DTC.”
In its earlier phases of trial, the Delhi transport department had trained all the depot managers and staff of nearly 50 depots. They in turn have trained their bus conductors. “The bus conductors play a crucial role in the whole system, therefore training them on how to use the app and help passengers in buying a ticket was of utmost importance.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government claimed that the online ticketing app ‘Chartr’ has seen a progressive increase in the number of users since the start of its trial. It claimed that more than two lakh people have downloaded this app since its release. The passengers can take an e-ticket through the ‘Chartr’ app after boarding the bus. The app can be downloaded from Google Play.
“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 the destination stop, click on ‘Buy’ and scan the bus QR code and choose the payment option to pay and get the ticket. An user can buy up to three tickets for a journey. The app automatically suggests pink ticket (free) for female passengers based on the gender entered by the user. A female passenger can buy up to one pink ticket for each journey,” said a statement issued by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
