Delhi Metro smart card for DTC bus rides
Big news for Delhiites! From August 24, you will be able to use your Delhi Metro smart card for bus rides too! In order to implement this move, the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) has been equipping all its buses with electronic ticketing machines in order to swipe the smart cards. The bus services of the cluster scheme will also be following the same. After a delay of nearly five months, the date for the soft launch of the ‘common mobility card’ project has been finally fixed, according to an HT report.
Earlier, it was announced by the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal that the facility would be available in all DTC as well as cluster scheme buses by April 1. However, as the DTC faced delays in the procurement of secure access module (SAM) chips that need to be fitted in every electronic ticketing machine (ETM) in order to enable e-payment, the second deadline was missed as well. According to DTC, the chips are procured from South Korea, however, the chips reached Delhi in a staggered manner. Meanwhile, the problem was not faced by the cluster buses, which are operated by DIMTS, as its ETMs were already enabled with the e-payment feature, the report stated.
A DTC official was quoted in the report saying that around 2,000 chips arrived in the month of May and 3,000 more chips arrived recently. As in a single day, DMRC can energise or calibrate only 150 ETMs, the process took time, the official said.
On January 8, the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal flagged off 250 buses that accepted metro smart cards for payments. Interestingly, with this move, Delhi became the first city in the country to introduce an e-purse travel system that performs transactions as low as Rs 5, the report stated.
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