THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: You are at the railway station, in a long queue, waiting to buy an unreserved ticket. The train you intended to board is already idling at the platform. Wouldn’t you be worried you might miss it? You might not have to any more from Saturday, ifyou are at one of the stations under the Thiruvananthapuram railway division. For rail commuters can now use a mobile app to obtain tickets in the unreserved category all thanks to the Southern Railways, which is launching the mobile application-based paperless ticket facility for the division’s passengers in 18 stations.
Christened ‘UTS on MOBILE’, the app can be downloaded from the respective app stores of Google, Apple and Microsoft and can be used to buy unreserved tickets using R-Wallet (Railway Wallet), an e-payment mode of Railways, sans any service charge. The app can be used to buy paperless unreserved tickets, purchase/renew season tickets and also take platform tickets via a smart phone having GPS and internet. Once the passenger takes the ticket in paperless option, the image of the ticket will be downloaded to the phone and can be displayed during ticket inspection.
The image is non-transferable and linked to the IMEI of the smart phone from which the ticket is taken. To purchase a ticket using the app from a station, the passenger has to be in the geo-fence area of the station which is 25 m away from the railway track/station and within a radius of five km of the station. The facility is being provided via the GPS-based ‘geo fencing’ feature.
After extensive testing, the facility is being launched at the Aluva, Ernakulam Town, Kanyakumari, Kottayam, Nagercoil Jn, Ernakulam Jn, Kulitturai, Varkala Sivagiri, Alappuzha, Chengannur, Kayamkulam Jn, Kollam Jn, Tiruvalla, Thrissur, Thiruvananthapuram Central, Changanassery, Guruvayur and Kochuveli railway stations of the Thiruvananthapuram Division.
Eventually, the facility will be provided at all other stations of the division to help passengers avoid long queues at ticket counters and travel without hassles. The introduction of the app will prove beneficial to around 1 lakh daily unreserved ticket users in the division. Helpdesks will be set up at railway stations with the active participation of Passengers Associations to familiarise commuters with the features of the app
Important guidelines
Passengers have to register their mobile numbers for the unreserved railway ticket booking in the app or online at https://www.utsonmobile.indianrail.gov.in/
This is a one-time activity. After successful registration, they will receive an MPIN (a four-digit number which will serve as the password) that can be used in the application and on the UTS mobile website
After successful registration, an e-wallet called R-Wallet will be created with zero balance. Passengers can recharge the R-Wallet to book the tickets from their registered mobile phones using their debit/credit cards, netbanking or wallets like Mobikwik and Paytm
Recharge the R-Wallet using the website. First, log in using the mobile number as the Login ID and the MPIN as the password. Then, recharge the wallet using the ‘Wallet Recharge’ option
The UTS is available for Android, Windows and Apple phones
The app also features a ‘Quick Book’ feature for taking tickets of regularly-travelled route