00:00 Hello everyone this is Aminah Ansari welcome to SJW News English
00:04 The financial capital of India, Mumbai is home to people from different parts of India.
00:11 People come from all over country to make living in Mumbai.
00:14 This whole environment of daily lives of these people are dependent on none other than the
00:20 local trains of Mumbai. The public uses the local train daily to commute daily to work and back home.
00:27 There are many commuters who are travelling ticketless daily and recently the western
00:32 railways have collected fines from these commuters in lakhs. According to a Hindustan Times report,
00:38 the western railway caught 5274 people travelling without valid tickets in just three days,
00:45 earning revenue of Rs 13.93 lakh in fines. The railway is now planning to conduct surveys and
00:53 speak to the passenger association to address the issue. We all know that travelling without
00:59 a ticket is not just a crime but also a social offence. But why is the public doing this even
01:05 after knowing that they are committing a crime? The railway stations in Mumbai continuously
01:11 announce every day that travelling ticketless is a crime but still people listen to it and ignore
01:16 it. Railways have now fined these ticketless tabloids and are planning to tackle the issue.
01:22 But why did it take this long? I live in Mumbai and I use the local trains to commute daily.
01:28 After listening to all these recent events, I was able to weave where it was going wrong.
01:34 When a person has to commute through local train in Mumbai, they have to stand in a long queue to
01:39 buy a ticket. But the railway has other options too to buy the tickets. The stations are equipped
01:45 with ticket generating machines to buy tickets. There is a particular app dedicated for people
01:51 to buy their ticket. So the commuters have these three options to get their ticket. Yet,
01:57 they choose to travel ticketless. Let us first look at these three options and identify where
02:03 it goes wrong from the railway's side. As I said before, there are long queues to buy physical
02:09 tickets. So people travel ticketless rather than missing their trains. But they can obviously use
02:15 the ticket generating machines. But let me tell you there are occasions when these machines are
02:21 either out of service or the transaction takes time. The last option is a booking application.
02:27 This application too has problems with it. One of them is the show ticket option of the app
02:32 from where you can show the ticket to the TC. All of a sudden, it shows that you do not have
02:37 the ticket even though the person has a valid ticket. And this has personally happened to me
02:42 more than once. Another issue with this app is a transaction. When a person makes a payment,
02:49 the app does not show the ticket. The ticket only appears after a few hours. It is high time when
02:55 the railway has to take Mumbai local train issues seriously. Strict action against the ticketless
03:01 traveller works well. But the railway has to keep this ticket checking in continuity to make sure
03:07 that the people who are doing this learn a social etiquette of public transport travelling. The
03:12 public too has to understand that you cannot go against the law. If you have rights, then you have
03:19 duties too. The public should at least have the basic sense of travelling with a ticket after all.
03:25 Local train travel in Mumbai is one of the cheapest modes of transport which you can use to
03:30 travel to any part of the city. That's all for this news report. For more such news and updates,
03:36 subscribe to SW News English.
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