It means the commuters will be able to buy their bus tickets and also use the same card for the journey on the Delhi Metro. More and more Transit options will be added in the coming years to make travel more convenient.
In a statement, Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said, "We wanted to totally move away with the current manual ticketing where the origin and destination are not being captured at all. Delhi wants to enable a system for the commuters to even know if the next bus coming is 100% full or partly crowded along with tracking of buses at the bus stop to know their exact waiting time".
The cards are part of the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) that enables passengers from any part of the country to use their NCMC-compliant RuPay debit card for seamless travel.
The first NCMC services were launched on the Airport Express Line on Delhi Metro in 2020 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
To launch this new system of ticketing, the concessionaire will first have to install electronic ticketing machines (ETMs) in Delhi's public buses. As of now, DTC buses don't have ETMs. These devices were used till September 2022 in nearly 2,000 cluster buses but now either they don’t work or need an upgrade.
The tender floated by the Transport department includes the supply and operation of Electronic Ticketing Machines (ETMs) for 7,500 buses in Phase 1. In addition, it also includes the provision of smart cards or NCMC cards for buying tickets rather than paying in cash.
The digital tickets will make it easy for the government to maintain the record of each trip and help it deploy buses rationally across over 500 bus routes. It is also part of the Route Rationalisation study conducted by the Transport department whose pilot phase is in progress since October last year.
