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Roana Maria Costa | TNN


Mumbai: Central Railway plans a focused marketing strategy to popularise automatic vending ticket machines (ATVMs), which have seen a lukewarm response since their introduction in 2007.
Smart card sales currently stand at around 21,000, amounting to Rs 2.6 lakh per day. Since the first ATVM was installed at CST on November 15, 2007, more than 1.1 crore smart cards have been sold, amounting to Rs 14 crore. CR hopes to increase revenues and reduce serpentine queues outside ticket windows by installing more ATVMs — 226 to be precise — by March 2010.
And it hopes a bit of smart marketing will do the trick. A survey by the commercial branch of CR at 15 stations like Byculla, Thane, Dombivli, Wadala Road Vashi and Dadar found that most people using ATVMs— 41.2% — were from the private sector, mainly teachers, office goers, engineers and accountants. Other segments of society using the smart card were self employed individuals (21.2%), students (17%), agents and marketing personnel (6.8%), government employees (7.5%) and housewives (5%) .
The survey, a brainchild of CR general manager B B Modgil, covered 1050 passengers who were using the machines, of whom 827 were men and 223 were women. Officials said this uneven distribution may be “Because this card is popular among passengers who travel frequently on different routes and women generally commute between specific stations and thus prefer season tickets.”
Another interesting finding was that only 3% of first-class commuters used the cards. Moreover, 12% of passengers used the cards once a week,25% used them twice a week,57% were daily users and 12% used them more than once a day.The survey was carried out in the last week of August and the report released early in September.The commercial department recommended roping in a professional agency to conduct the publicity campaign for the ATVMs.
Around 98% of users said they were happy with the ATVMs, especially with the recently started season ticket renewal facility, though some pointed out shortcomings. “The ATVMs were intended to save time, but the purpose is defeated during peak hour as many people queue up to swipe the card. Also, some of the machines don’t work causing queues for the ones that do. For instance, the ones at Thane are always faulty. Besides, the machine doesn’t always respond on time and due to lack of familiarity with the mechanism there’s the possibility of multiple swipes where the commuter loses money,” said a Mulund resident.

Source : Times of India