Bengaluru metro’s QR system crashes, second incident in a month

BENGALURU: For the second time within a month, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited’s Quick Response (QR) ticketing system malfunctioned due to technical issues causing inconvenience to thousands of commuters. Long queues were noticed at many metro stations from 4.45 pm and the issue was resolved by 9.15 pm.

The ticket money had been deducted from the accounts but no QR code was generated, said many commuters. This was the whatsapp message they received: “Looks like I have encountered some technical issue…Apologies, your ticket booking request has failed. The refund for the amount has been rasied. The amount would be credited to source of payment within 7 business days.”

On an average, anywhere between 10,000 and 12,000 commuters book QR tickets using whatsapp chatbot. The facility was launched on November 1 to prevent crowding at stations. On December 12, the server crashed due to huge bookings and was set right at night.

The Nadaprabhu Kemepgowda Interchange Baiyappanahalli, Swami Vivekananda, M G Road, Indira Nagar and National College Metro stations which saw crowds in front of counters on Sunday evening and night for purchase of tokens or top up of smart cards. Outsourced staff manning customer care centres said that BMRCL told them that the server was down.

T P Raghunandan and his wife N K Chaitra tried to book their tickets from Baiyappanahalli to Trinity Metro station. “I was not able to book for both of us and so I booked for me alone. It deducted Rs 19 and said the booking could not be done. We queued up for our tokens,” Raghunandan told TNIE.

Another couple, Pavan Vasista and Purnima, too faced a similar situation, “We were trying to book from Kempegowda to Dodakallasandra station after 5 pm. I tried booking my ticket thrice. It deducted Rs 33.25 each time and so I spent Rs 99.75 and my ticket never got booked. My wife tried once from her phone and Rs 33.25 was deducted. A staffer told me that for the last one hour this method was not working."

Executive Director, Operations and Maintenance, BMRCL, A S Shankar said, “QR ticket is operational for over two months now. Some teething problems are there and the technical team is monitoring and doing some changes. It will all settle in due course,” he said.

Chief Public Relations Officer B L Yashwanth Chavan said, “It is a technical glitch at the back end and technicians are on the job.”