South Central Railway has engaged 21 Automated Ticket Vending Machine Facilitators (ATVM Facilitators) at Secunderabad, Hyderabad, Begumpet, Lingampalli, Sitafalmandi, Kacheguda and Malakpet railway stations. Retired Railway employees are engaged to work as ATVM Facilitators. Equipped with high value ATVM Smart Cards, these ATVMFacilitators issue MMTS Tickets Platform tickets and General Second Class Tickets for ordinary / expressTrains originating / passing throughTwin Cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad for travel to those destinationswith in South Central Railway jurisdiction. Passengers are not charged any thing extra for ATVM Tickets issued by the ATVM Facilitators. Railway pays5 per cent commission to ATVM Facilitators on the totalvalue of tickets sold by them.
Passengers who do not possess a ATVM Smart Card or are not acquainted withgeneratingtheir tickets in theATVMs, are ahappy lot since they can purchase their tickets from ATVM Facilitators immediately on arrival at the Stations with out of any loss of timewaiting in the long queues at the booking counters.
At present, 60 new ATVM Smart Cards are sold and 460 Smart Cards are recharged on an average per day.8660 tickets are issued per day through 67 ATVMs installed at 16 MMTS Stations in the Twin Cities. 10, 665 passengers are travelling on ATVM tickets. These ATVMs have still larger capacity to issue more number of tickets. If passengers buy tickets from ATVMs directly or through ATVM Facilitators, the long queues at the general booking counters will reduce.
By using the smart card, required ticket can be generated in the ATVM in just about half a minute, where as in a normal booking counter,the passenger has to wait in long queues, specially during morning and evening rush hours. Railway also gives 5% bonus on the smart cards. If a passenger buys ATVM Smart Card worth of Rs. 1000/-he can buy tickets worth Rs. 1050/- apart from saving his valuable time.
