Chennai Metro has decided to ramp up its ticket sales by opening more counters and installing more baggage scanners to remove the need for passengers to walking a long distance inside the station. | Photo Credit: M. KARUNAKARAN

Long walks to buy tickets will be thing of the past in Metro stations as additional infrastructure and manpower will be in place within a few months.

The Phase I project of the Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. (CMRL) has 32 stations dotting its 45-km network in the city and each station has been built with four entry and exit points. On two sides of the concourse level in each station, there are ticket counters, vending machines and automatic fare collection gates. But in about 10 stations, these facilities are functional only on one side. This forced passengers to walk from one end of the station to the other just to buy ticket.

This scenario will change in three months as CMRL plans to activate ticket counters and install x-ray scanners on both sides in all stations, according to officials.

Earlier, counters were not functional on both sides in these stations as the passenger traffic was low since the operations began in 2015. But the footfall in Metro stations has risen to 1.7 lakh on weekdays. “As we are expecting a further increase in the footfall in the coming months, we are making arrangements to order additional baggage scanners, hire security staff and place the ticketing staff in both sides of the concourse. This will be particularly easy on senior citizens as they do not have to walk a distance to buy the ticket,” an official said.

Meanwhile, passengers said the CMRL has to set right the glitches in ticket vending machines which had remained dysfunctional for several months now.

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Printable version | May 15, 2022 8:37:31 pm | https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/chennai-metro-to-open-more-ticket-counters-at-all-stations/article65416665.ece