Delhi Metro’s app, ‘DMRC Travel’, which was launched on June 30 for commuters to purchase mobile QR tickets, has seen over 1.75 lakh downloads till Wednesday morning. Though the percentage of QR paper tickets sold is currently high, DMRC is expecting that more commuters will shift to mobile tickets soon.
Apart from regular commuters who use smart cards, some purchase tokens for single journey. As Delhi Metro Rail Corporation plans to phase out tokens gradually, it first launched a paper-based QR tickets and then a mobile app.
According to DMRC, 73,544 QR tickets were sold from July 1 to 11. However, 6.77 lakh was the average daily sale of single journey ticket in DMRC and of these, only 1% mobile based QR-tickets were sold. While maximum commuters chose paper-based QR tickets at 81.27% and 17.75% tokens were sold.
“Paper tickets is like a transitory step and likely to go significantly down as more people get familiar with mobile ticket mechanism in the coming months,” said a DMRC official. Though Delhi Metro plans to phase out tokens, the paper-based QR tickets will remain available as some people don’t use a smart phone.
‘DMRC Travel’ app supports a variety of payment methods, including UPI, credit/debit Cards, and wallets, ensuring flexibility and convenience. Passengers can choose their preferred payment option and easily complete the transaction.
This app also has other passenger centric features like travel planner, fare calculator, station information, and smart card recharge.
For Airport Express Line, DMRC had introduced another option of WhatsApp-based QR tickets on May 30. Of the total 20,246 average per day single journey ticket sale on Airport Express Line, around 82% constituted paper-based QR tickets.
To provide such a user friendly, cashless, and fast mode of ticketing, DMRC upgraded its AFC gates on all its corridors without shutting down them even for a single day.
“The entire exercise was taken up mostly during limited time available in the night once the passenger services were over, in a manner that once the services resumed next day, all the gates were again kept functional for passengers. DMRC has already upgraded over 60% of its AFC gates with QR code scanners and remaining are also targeted to be covered with in next 1-2 months,” said a metro official earlier.
