“We have received a lot of interest for supply of these machines from several German and Austrian companies and we are likely to finalise contracts soon,” said a highly placed railway official. “In fact, these companies are willing to supply all the machines to us free of cost. In return, we will be allowing the (selected) vendors of these machines to advertise behind each ticket issued as well as on the body and screen of the machines.” A maximum of 40 such machines are planned to be installed at each station in the city.

According to the official, this arrangement means that the railways incurs no capital cost, recurring cost or transaction cost on the sale of these tickets. This would include savings to the tune of Rs 1.5 lakh for the price of each of the 350 machines to be installed in Mumbai in the first phase. A saving of around Rs 525 crore. “We are first going to see how this system works out in Mumbai and if it goes well, we will be implementing it next in Delhi and Chennai,” the official said. “In a couple of years, we plan to install around 9,000-10,000 such machines across the country.” To ensure that the vendors keep these machines running efficiently, the Railways is working towards creating several incentives.

Since a commuter will need a smart card to work these machines, and not all may have it, unemployed youth would be appointed as intermediaries. “We are seeing many unofficial touts doing this already. Now, we will bring them into the system,” the official said. The machines will help in making travel less cumbersome for over 6 million daily commuters on the Mumbai railway system, by providing a ‘queue-less’ mechanism for purchase of unreserved journey tickets. Unreserved train tickets constitute 90 per cent of the total tickets sold by the Indian railways every day.