Bengaluru: Faulty ticketing machines force BMTC to issue paper tickets

Bengaluru: While Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is trying to implement the ambitious Intelligent Transport System (ITS), its plan to bring in electronic ticketing is floundering due to malfunctioning machines.

The electronic ticketing machines (ETM) was the part of ITS, but now nearly 3000 plus ETMs are not in a working condition.

A senior BMTC officer told Deccan Chronicle, "The ETMs are provided and maintained by a private company and now many of them are facing technical glitches. The corporation is in touch with the service provider and we hope the company will soon rectify them."

The main feature of ITS include GPS-enabled Vehicle Tracking System (VTM), ETM, Passenger Information System (PIS), control room and data centre, and BMTC mobile application.

BMTC had expected an increase its revenue through the deployment of ITS in two ways, one from increased operational efficiency, including the issue of tickets through ETMs and the other through increased ridership as ITS is expected to encourage more people to use BMTC buses. The ETMs for BMTC were provided by Trimax IT Infrastructure Services in 2014. The company had designed, installed and implemented ETMs and issued 10,000 machines across all depots.

But a BMTC source said it may terminate its contract with Trimax, for providing poor quality ETMs and for not developing the required software and testing it at the right time.