Indian Railways: Bar-Coded Flap Gates To Be Installed At Railway Stations; Pilot Project To Start At Brar Square Station In Delhi

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) which is the software arm of the Railways is all set to make the new flap gate system operational at Brar Square station in Delhi Division.

New Delhi, July 10: The Ministry of Railways is always on the go to fulfill its promise of providing better facility to all the passengers. In order to facilitate faster ticket checking and reduce the pressure on ticket examiners and collectors, the Indians Railways has planned to install automatic flap gates with bar code scanners at stations. Provision of passenger amenities has been one of the important objectives of Indian Railways both in terms of business ethics as well as a social obligation.

As part of a pilot project, the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the software arm of the Railways is all set to make the new flap gate system operational at Brar Square station in Delhi Division. The access control system at Brar Square will be functional in the next three months, a senior Railway Ministry official was quoted by PTI. The reason for choosing Brar station for conducting the trial because the passenger rush is limited there.

How will the new flap gates with bar code scanners work?

• As per the system design, an encrypted QR code will be printed on unreserved tickets for the designated station where passengers need to enter or exit through these gates after validating their tickets.
• As a first step, the entire station will be fenced so that no passenger escapes without ticket.
• The automatic flap gate system can handle faster entry or exit of passengers during the rush hour.
• Besides installing automatic gates, there will be counters at the Brar Square station to provide QR-coded tickets to passengers for entry or exit.

Challenges:

The access control system is successfully tackling the Metro rush in the national capital and Kolkata but has never been tried in the railway system. The major difference between metro stations and other railway stations is that Metro stations are situated either at elevated or underground levels while railway stations are on the surface without boundary walls.

The cost of new system:

• It costs about Rs 4 lakh to install the automatic gate with barcode facility.
• Besides, there will be thermal printers at ticket counters for barcoded tickets.

Initially, the access control system has already been operational in Kolkata and Delhi Metro services and will be implemented at non-metropolitan stations where traffic rush is very less. If this move is successful, the system will enable Railways to deal with the shortage of train ticket examiners and ticket collectors.