BENGALURU: Bengaluru’s public transport users could expect a pilot test of a common mobility card in two months’ time. They will be then able to use a single smart card to travel in both Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation’s buses and Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation’s Metro trains. BMTC had proposed a pilot test to Metro recently, selecting a few stations for the trial.
“The existing BMTC smart card software follows National Common Mobility card standards and is already open loop, which means it can be used elsewhere too. However, Metro’s software used in automatic fare collection gates (AFC) is closed-loop. We suggested putting a new AFC gate in two to three stations for the pilot,” said Anupam Agarwal, BMTC director for information technology as well as security and vigilance. BMRCL public relations officer Yashwant Chavan said,” Two Metro stations will be selected for the pilot which will start in September and a few smart cards will be issued to commuters for a trial run.”
Ajay Seth, BMRCL Managing Director said,” BMRCL is placing an order with BEL on July 11 for development of four indigenous AFC gates for taking up the pilot for common mobility card. The backend software will be developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing.