BMTC raises concern on mobility card; faces shortage of ETMs
BENGALURU: Recently, the Bangalore Metropolitan Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) Managing Director has said that the common mobility card which was to come in by September, will now see a trial run in January.
However, BMTC has brought out a few challenges it may face in regard to the integrated card. The corporation is seeing a few issues such as network and setting up of the software in the e-ticketing machines (ETM).
While Metro is a closed-loop card and BMTC is an open-loop card. An open-loop control system acts completely on the basis of input and the output has no effect on the control action.
Whereas, a closed-loop control system considers the current output and alters it to the desired condition.
“Our card is with Axis bank and is an open-loop system but the new card will be entirely different. We are in talks with BMRCL and our IT vendor is not part of the transition,” Shikha said.
The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is facing a crisis with shortage of ETMs. The corporation has 12,000 ETMs and presently 30 per cent of them are undergoing maintenance.
Presently, conductors are forced to use manual ticket machines.BMTC managing director Shikha C said that the corporation’s Intelligent Transport System (ITS) project, which was introduced in 2016, has some technical issues and is working with the vendor — Trimax IT Infrastructure Services.
“A time-bound action plan has been made and the ETMs should be ready within a month,” Shikha told The New Indian Express.
“It is also understood that the vendor is facing bankruptcy, which in turn has hit the IT-related operation of the corporation. It also resulted in technical glitches in the BMTC app, though now the corporation is set to launch a new app called MyBMTC. It was previously decided that new tenders would be floated after the elections this year. However, no decision has been made so far,” she added.