Railbiz Yantra

RAILBIZ YANTRA
1
Y.UJJWALA, 2K.M.SUKANYA, 3P.PRIYA PACKIYA RANI, 4K. VALARMATHI

ME PHD, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Panilmalar Engineering College.

CSE Department, Panilmalar Engineering College

Abstract The passenger flow in the northern division of Chennai Suburban Railway system is multiplying day by day. The
existing ticketing system which is causing a considerable delay in the travel time due to the major drawback- long queues. In
this paper, we aim to meet the inconvenience of all commuters in such a way that even a layman can fetch tickets in an effective
manner. Firstly, this paper provides a brief glance at ATVMs (Automatic Ticket Vending Machines) technology which is
already implemented in the Indian Railways, along with an insight of its drawbacks. Later it provides an insight into our
proposed method which innovates the existing method. The scope of this paper is particularly for the Chennai Suburban
Railways (CSR) where cost effectiveness and user accessibility is of paramount importance, as CSR is massively used by
middle class people who cannot afford even the slightest of increase in the ticket price. The UCD (User Centered Design)
approach can be considered as a valuable framework for the development and design of self-service systems.

Keywords ATVM, Commuters, CSR, IR, Ticket, UCD, User Accessibility

I. INTRODUCTION occasionally found to turn blank causing

Indian Railways have emerged as the worlds largest
rail network. In the present India, almost 20 million
travel through Indian Railways Suburban trains on
daily basis. With that number, it is no doubt the
biggest public sector enterprise in India; leading to
involvement of billions of rupees. As with the
globalization, market has become more users-oriented,
Indian Railways too aims at its customers
satisfaction. The research in this paper has been
carried out on the basis of data procured from various
blogs and forums. Since the posts on these websites
are given by travellers demonstrating their various
problems faced with present ATVMs which helped us
to proceed further on our work.
Our present Indian Railways Ticket Booking is done
in two ways: Manual booking counters and Automatic
Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs). There are lakhs
of people forming long queues in front of manual
booking counters at suburban stations to fetch their
local train tickets everyday, thereby reaching late to
their respective destinations. In order to provide better
facilities to passengers by reducing those long queues
in front of manual booking counters, the Indian
Railways has invested crores of rupees in installing the
Automatic Ticket Vending machines (ATVM).
The Automatic Ticket Vending Machines failed to
fulfill the expectations of both the Railways and the
public because it was found lacking in the following
areas of usage. At its time of introduction the touch
screen model was relatively new to the Indian
population hence was not considered much user
friendly by the general public. The touch system is so
sensitive that the passengers were not able to handle
those machines with care and were also unable to
understand its operation. Also the touch screen was
inconvenience to commuters who wish to purchase
tickets. The proposed model is designed to mimic
basic model with buttons which is familiar and popular
even with the uneducated public as even the poor and
uneducated mostly use basic version mobile phones;
thus eliminating the technique sensitivity needed to
handle the touch screen models.
The ATVM machines are bulky and occupy a
considerable amount of space in the railway stations.
The newly proposed models can be installed on the
walls between the manual counters since they are very
small in size. Thus in addition to being sleek and user
friendly they provide an extra advantage of occupying
less space and looking more sophisticated in the
railway stations.
Another major drawback with the current model of
ATVM is that the machine was not capable of
delivering even 1000 tickets on an average per day. .
Hence in our proposed model we have incorporated
technology to ensure that this drawback is overcome
and much more tickets are vended without suffering
any errors. The South Central Railway (SCR) has
roped in some retired railway employees to work as
Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs)
facilitators at a few stations in the city since the users
are not comfortable to access the machine to fetch the
ticket in an easy manner.
ATVMs are considered most reliable during rush hour
and exactly at that time the machines abruptly stop
working leaving commuters in the lurch. The
passengers are found running across the whole station
in order to find a machine in working condition. The
machines are at fault sometimes in detecting the smart
cards when being placed on the reader. Sometimes, the
commuters find that there is no ticket from the

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machine, eventhough the card shows the amount for it
has been deducted and when the issue is being taken to
the Chief Ticket Supervisor, they turn a deaf ear
towards it. Passengers do not know how and where
they can get a refund. Sometimes in very rare
situations it is found that due to the aggressiveness of
the passengers, the Chief Booking Supervisor (CBS)
has to pay the passenger the deducted money manually
but the railways do not refund that amount back to the
CBS. The product is advantageous since software for
the machine would be designed such that money
wouldnt be deducted from the commuters card until
the ticket is printed. So once the printed ticket comes
out of the machine, money will get deducted. So there
will be no chance for money deduction without getting
ticket.
The existing ATVMS do not detect the absence of
paper in the paper roll and also it does not intimate the
passenger. Whereas our ATVMs display No paper.
Please replace a new paper-roll message on the
screen when the paper in the machine is exhausted.
The message continues to display until the paper roll
has been replaced with a new one so that the commuter
cannot proceed their further transactions.
Hence, it appears as if the boon has turned into a bane,
as most of the ATVMs are non-functional and need
more maintenance. Therefore the proposed project
focus on developing a product which overcomes the
above drawbacks of the existing ATVMs where
process innovation is used for more responsive
commuter service and improved quality can be
obtained at reduced costs by using the most basic and
simple technologies which exist.
solution for the problem of manual ticketing by the use
of Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. It
requires each commuter to have an unique RFID tag
for their identity.
III. PROPOSED METHOD
The project aims at bringing out a new generation of
ticket machines to meet the needs of different user
groups. An approach seemed appropriate to address
this issue: Focus on those groups of users most
frequently confronted with problems in using ticket
machines. Initially the smart card has to be prepared
with required user data that needs to be made available
for commuters use. The smart card will be issued
through the card counter that may be located near
railway station manual ticket counter. Each smart card
will have some amount. The smart card thus prepared
is provided to passengers who wish to use the machine
for booking tickets. Once the card is issued to the
passenger, they can use it. Once the card has been
verified and the commuter enters ticket details, the
commuter can dispatch the ticket available to him
from the ticket vending machine. If the number of
ways to buy the tickets is increased, then the problem
of travelling without ticket can be solved.

II. LITERATURE SURVEY

Fig.1: Functional Block Diagram of ATVM

Various researches have been done on Railway

The smart card will be issued through the smart card
Automatic Ticket Vending Machines. Marc
counter that may be located at railway station. Each
Hassenzahl et al. [5] examined on User Experience
smart card will have some amount. Server is used to
(UX) to be a strange phenomenon: readily adopted by
maintain the record of smart card and user
the Human Computer Interaction (HCI). HCIs
information. Database System will be established to
main objective was to contribute to our quality of life
hold information like list of registered customers who
by designing for pleasure rather than for absence of
use the machine. Normally offline server is used in
pain in the future.
metro cities like Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi etc. so that
one can get local tram ticket. The information of the
Anthony Lo et al. [6] conducted a research on
registered user saved in database is matched with the
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications system
information stored in the card as soon as the user
which overcomes the drawbacks of traditional
inserts the card into card reader, which is connected to
Human-to-Human (H2H) communication. But
the server. The display is manual (i.e.,) it is only used
probably ended up with the decision that
for the purpose of viewing, not touch-sensitive. The
Human-to-Machine (H2M) communication to be more
user can input the details with buttons. When the
efficient when compared with the other two systems.
commuter inputs all details regarding the destination
station, travel way and number of passengers, the
SB. Shriram et al. [7] analyzed the use of Automated
ticket vending machine will issue the ticket through
Ticket Vending Machine by the people which made
the record printer and amount will be deduct from the
him discover that ATVM machines were not so
balance on the smart card. Record printer is use to
successful in all the places where they have been
provide the ticket for the journey based on details
implemented. He attempted to provide an feasible
entered by the commuter as input.

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IV. HARDWARE DESCRIPTION

Fig.2: Block diagram for automatic ticket vending machine

Fig.3: Flow chart of proposed work
Ticket friend mechanism employed in automatic ticket
vending machine consists of smart card, card reader,
V. IMPLEMENTATION
ARM microcontroller, Printer and LCD Display. The
LCD screen is more energy efficient. Its low electrical
The implementation of the project consists of many
power consumption enables it to be used in battery too
modules. Visual basic .net compact framework
in case of power failure. Once if the passenger inserts
software developed on WinCE 6.0 operating system is
the smart card to the ticket friendly machine, the card
used for as platform for purpose of creating modules.
reader verifies the card and allows the commuter
Windows Embedded CE 6.0 is the sixth major release
access the system further. The system provides the
of Microsoft Windows embedded operating system
passenger with available options on the display screen.
targeted to enterprise specific tools such as industrial
Based on selection, the passenger gives his/her input.
controllers and consumer electronic devices. The
The printer that has been embedded in the vending
smart card holds the user name and account details
machine automatically prints ticket on passengers
required for their further transactions on the chip or
confirmation. It acts as an interface between user and
magnetic strip contained in it. The application with
ticket when passenger access the ticket vending
data about the ticket fares, source and destination
machine to buy the ticket. In case the paper in machine
stations will be created and loaded onto ARM
is exhausted, it displays a warning message so that the
microcontroller Cortex-M chip which will be further
passenger can get alert. Hence it consists of a
embedded into the proposed automatic ticket vending
replaceable paper-roll. The entire system is controlled
machine.
by ARM microcontroller. The above mechanism
works with power-supply and in case of any power
failure, it even works on a rechargeable battery.

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In the existing ATVM (Fig.4), the smart card has to be

placed in the big rectangular area below the display on
the machine which is unfamiliar to the commuters.
Whereas, in the proposed ATVM shown in Fig.5, the
smart card can be either inserted into the machine or
can be swiped as in a normal debit or credit card
machine.

Fig.6: Smart Card

The smart card used for both existing ATVM and

proposed ATVM looks exactly the same but vary a bit
Fig.4: Existing ATVM in the information it holds. The smart card shown in
fig.6 is the one which is available for purchase of
tickets in Chennai area only as mentioned on the card.
Similar cards are available for use only in other metro
city like Mumbai too. These cards can be used only in
those states in India where they are issued. Thus the
utility of smart cards in procuring railway tickets using
automatic ticket vending machines is giving rise to a
new technology which is found to be efficient.

CONCLUSION

The present ticket vending machines are based on

touch-screen which is the cause for all major problems
that are caused. Hence the proposed method tries to
overcome the inconvenience and problems caused by
existing touch-based ticket vending machines by
utilization of the most basic and simple techniques.
Also it consumes less power when compared to
existing automatic ticket vending machines as real
time operating system techniques are used. It is
believed that by implementation of this system
problems such as long waiting time at railway ticket
counter will be reduced. As the proposed work mainly
focuses on issue of local train tickets through this
ATVM machine, they are expected to work faster than
those of existing ones due to less operatios both
internally and externally. Both passenger and railway
reservation employee can save their time which can be
effectively utilized and hence they benefit a lot from
the system.
Fig.5: Proposed ATVM

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The major advantage of this project is its
cost-effectiveness considering the scenario of
Chennai. Its feasibility also adds to the efficiency of its
application in the Chennai Northern line. Access
barriers often result from insufficient knowledge of
how to use the electronic systems (ticket vending
machines) that are becoming increasingly common at
railway stations and of the complexity of these
systems. The main motive is to give the common
people a good facility for railways travelling. And also
to make people realize the fact that travelling with
ticket helps in the development of nation. Thus the
proposed automatic ticket vending machine is
economic, user friendly, reliable and can be easily
accessed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are indebted to the administrators of the blog
www.indiarailinfo.com and also to all those people
who take time out after their journeys to post their
valuable feedbacks. This project would not have been
possible without the data that we procured from this
blog.
We wish to thank all our respected teachers and
friends for their excellent contributions and support
for the completion of this paper. Specially we are very
much thankful to Dr. K.Valarmathi and Dr. S. Malathi
of Panimalar Engineering College for their efforts to
facilitate and provide us most suitable environment for
research and development.
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