VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) is contemplating to develop a unified ticketing solutions application that will use cloud technology for booking tickets. The corporation is awaiting the government’s nod to go ahead with the project.
RTC executive director (operations) KS Brahmananda Reddy told TNIE that 39 per cent of the passengers book their tickets through Online Passenger Reservation System (OPRS). “If the government approves development of the new platform that will use cloud computing, tenders will be invited immediately and the project will be materialised in six months.” According to officials, the corporation is using different platforms for ticketing, reservation, tracking and complaints.
The new platform will bring all the services together for easy accessibility by the passengers. The RTC sells tickets worth around Rs 5,000 crore every year. Its annual expenditure on ticket issuing machines (TIMs) is Rs 8 crore and Rs 2 crore on paper rolls.
In July, the RTC had proposed ‘Pratham’, a first-of-its-kind mobile application to encourage cashless transactions during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, due to reasons unknown the project could not materialise further.
When it comes to the new proposed platform, the project will be materialised by the company that wins the tender in coordination with banks as partners. If everything goes as planned, e-PoS machines given by the banks will be utilised for generating tickets as against the TIMs. At present, the Corporation is working out to finalise the ticket pricing. A detailed monitoring will be done when the application comes into operation.