Railways implements contactless ticket checking, issues airport-like boarding passes at Prayagraj

The move is aimed at ensuring passenger safety and contain the spread of Covid-19.

Passengers who arrive at the Prayagraj Railway Station are first taken to a boarding hall with four new check-in counters. These counters are fully contactless. The passenger side and the ticket checker side is physically separated through glass partition on the wall of the counter.

A webcam on the passenger side is connected to computer available with ticket checking staff. This helps the Railway staff to scan ticket and particulars of passenger identity. A microphone and speakers are also provided on both sides for communication between passenger and ticket checking staff.

This technology ensures contactless ticket checking to safeguard passengers and railway staff and at the same time helps in identifying vacant berths in a train which are then relayed to next station for better availability of berth to passengers. The onboard checking staff will get the following information in a tabular format:

=>Coach Wise display with number of berth

=>Berth not booked

=>Berth booked and boarding passes issued

=>Berth booked and boarding passes not issued

The Railways has also started integrating Thermal scanning process to make it comprehensive and single checkpoint for passenger for entry in the station. Prayagraj Junction station has already implemented automatic QR code based ticket scanning since June 1.

For better manpower management, a dashboard has been installed to know expected passengers for boarding at any time. This helps to deploy suitable number of checking staff for this purpose.

Railways also said that 30 AC special trains from May 12 and 200 special trains from June 1 have been started of which 26 AC special and 100 other special trains have stoppage at different stations over NCR including 2 originating specials between Prayagraj-New Delhi and Kanpur-New Delhi.