Railways Plans to Give Tickets a Uniform, Aesthetic Look

NEW DELHI:  While Indian Railways continue to struggle for providing quality experience to passengers aboard trains, it has decided to give a aesthetic and uniform look to passengers tickets. The Railway Board has already circulated a set format for passenger tickets to all zonal railways for the same.

At present 16 different formats of tickets under unreserved ticketing system (UTS) are prevalent in different zones in the country.

The existing formats of UTS tickets have been reviewed in consultation with CRIS (Centre for Railway Information Systems), the IT arm of Railways.

“Based on feedback received from Centre for Railway Information Systems, it has been decided that 16 formats of UTS tickets may be replaced with seven formats,” said an order issued by Vikram Singh, Director Passenger Marketing, Railway Board.

The ticket size shall remain the same 120mmX64mm with advertisement and 103mmX64mm without advertisement. The printable area shall be 78mmX59mm. The caption ‘Happy Journey’ (in English and Hindi) shall be printed on one side of Indian Railways logo and pre-printed stock number on the other side of Indian Railways logo.    According to CRIS official, a design competition was held whereby ideas were crowd sourced and some of the best have been selected.

“The idea was to give aesthetic and uniform look to UTS tickets and now all zones have been instructed to take necessary actions,” said the official.

Railways has also partnered Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Design (NID) for an image makeover for the state-run transporter.

The NID will improve passenger services through innovative ideas focusing on people, environment and sustainability through this research centre. It will also design ladder for upper berths, lighting arrangements at stations and circulating areas to give an aesthetic touch to rail facilities.