Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Tickets by mobile

The Bangalore railway station now has an SMS-based platform ticket dispenser. Message a number, get a 5 digit code in return, punch the code into the machine, and get a ticket. No fiddling for change. Very cool.

Wonder if there’s a way to buy more than one at a go. Or if they could change it to print a ticket without the verification code process.

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  deponti — May 3, 2007 11:57:38 PM — # ↩

  Er…how much does the SMS cost? No fun paying 2 rupees for an SMS to get a 2 rupee ticket..
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    Kiran Jonnalagadda — May 4, 2007 10:13:01 AM — # ↩

    The machine printed me a Rs 3 ticket. I assume that is what the SMS cost. The railways are known to be particular about overhead charges by vendors.
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  fus — May 5, 2007 4:46:12 PM — # ↩

  The system here which lets you buy tickets for the local transport and for the german railways sends the ticket to your cellphone, not a barcode but a machine readable ticket of some sort, which then the controller reads off your cellphone display with the usual code scanner