VIJAYAWADA: Passengers of the South Central Railway (SCR) have increasingly turned towards booking unreserved tickets through UTS (unreserved ticketing system) mobile application.As per the information given by SCR officials, around 60,000 passengers purchased the unreserved tickets through the online application in April 2018. However, the number has reached to a whopping 3.87 lakh by June 2019.
In a press release issued here, SCR General Manager Gajanan Mallya said that UTS mobile application was one of the major digital avenues implemented by the SCR in taking forward the digitalization of railway services for the convenience of passengers, as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal. He said that the facility has reduced rush at booking counters and has been serving towards a green environment as it works without paper.
Initially, the UTS application was introduced in the suburban sector (MMTS jurisdiction) of SCR in the year 2016 as a pilot project. Buoyed by the response from the railway users, it was extended to the entire zone in July, 2018 and later on, extended for country-wide use from November 2018 for both the suburban and non-suburban services.
“The main benefit of this ticket-booking application was that passengers can purchase unreserved, platform and season tickets through their mobile phones (cashless) as per their own convenience. The users can create ‘Railway Wallet’ (R-Wallet) and avail five per cent bonus on every recharge to the wallet,” Mallya said. The SCR GM further appealed to all the railway users to avail the services of the application and save their valuable time.
Campaign by SCR PR dept
Wide Publicity was organised through Public Relations department which said— “Do not wait in line, go online” through display ads, press releases, radio jingles, short films, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook in cities of Secunderabad, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Tirupati and Warangal