During the first phase in August, the 3-day trial covered 31 buses of a cluster bus route. (Express photo: Amit Mehra/Representational)The second phase trials of contactless ticketing in Delhi’s public buses began Monday with a number of updates in the mobile app including availability of pink passes for women, a feature to find out commuting time by factoring in road traffic, among others.
During the first phase in August, the 3-day trial covered 31 buses of a cluster bus route. This time, around 350 buses plying across 25 routes will be covered during the 15-day trial, said project head Pravesh Biyani.
An associate professor at IIIT-Delhi (Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology), Biyani said commuters will also be able to switch to the Hindi version in the updated app for greater accessibility. “People wanted pink passes to be made available, which has been done. The estimated arrival time to a destination will be shown based on live traffic status along the route of a bus. The location of bus stops shown in the app will be more accurate,” he told The Indian Express.
Among other additions is a feature which will invalidate tickets once a commuter reaches the destination to prevent potential misuse of the system, Biyani said.
Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot, who inspected the trials during the day, said 2,000 tickets were issued through the app, including 1,500 pink passes for women which enables them to commute free of cost across all public buses in the city.
Unlike the first phase, DTC buses will also be covered in the trials this time, Biyani said, expressing hope that the project will be scaled up across the 6,000-strong public bus fleet.