Rail Cards to Replace Monthly Seasonal Tickets
Those of you who travel daily via local trains must have already made monthly tickets for yourselves. What happens with these tickets is that you get to travel without having to go through the ticket counter every day. With the infrastructure already in place the government might now introduce the monthly ‘card’ in place of ‘ticket’.
What are these rail cards?
These rail cards are the new way to get your monthly tickets. These are the same as metro smart cards. Earlier it was notified that a pilot project will be launched in two sectors, mainly New Delhi-Howrah and New Delhi-Kolkata.
According to the plans, there will be three types of rail cards of this order:
- Silver: The silver card is for the monthly pass holders. So if you are someone who needs to update their monthly tickets, then you will have to get a silver card from the station now.
- Gold: If you are comfortable getting a six month card then you can opt for the gold type card. This will of course give you better privileges – more on it later.
- Platinum: If you are beyond the six month and your traveling plans are pretty much faced, then you will need a year long pass card. The platinum card is for those requirements.
Pilot project at Mumbai
According to research nearly 1.1 crore people travel by local trains. Kolkata and Chennai are among the major portion of daily commuters via trains. This is why nearly 31 banks have shown interest in co branding with the Railways. They conveyed the same to the senior Railways ministry official, who said that some banks such as the ICICI, PNB and SBI have shown keen interest in co branding and therefore agreements are currently under revision to be signed.
If all goes well, there will be a pilot project that will be launched in Mumbai and according to the observations there, the same will be implemented on other cities with major suburban railway commuters as well.
Mumbai itself has more than 7.5 million daily commuters who travel via train.
Conclusion
The added benefit of this project is that you can also enjoy some retail therapy with these cards. This is why it will be a unique experience and it may give you something that you never thought was possible with the railway tickets. Now with the e-cards you will actually be able to go ahead and indulge in some discounts and such things.
Get ready to apply for your e-cards because the government has already started off with a mobile application process. While the mobile application process was for booking the unreserved suburban tickets, the monthly and yearly cards will revolutionize the whole process taking it a step further.
Overview
Here are a few details of the project that you might want to know:
| Serial no. | Data | Info |
| 1 | Number of banks interested in the project | 31 |
| 2 | Pilot project will be launched in | Mumbai |
| 3 | Cards can also be used for | Retail therapy |
| 4 | Card types | Monthly seasonal |
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