Nagpur: Its a card that will open not just Metro station doors but pay for your vehicle parking, buy bus tickets and other utilities… and in the bargain it has saved the Nagpur Metro project Rs. 200/ crores from the DPR alloted to it for usual token and turnstiles that are there at every Metro station across the country.
Remember the token you have to purchase when you are traveling in the Delhi metro? You feed it in the alloted place and the rigid turnstiles would turn to let you in. It would have costed Rs. 200 crores in total to set it up at every metro station in Nagpur. The money had already been alloted in the DPR.
But the Metro management came across the Automatic Fare Collection System AFCS which was developed by banks but were not in use since there were no customers for it. Nagpur Metro has captive customers – all Nagpurians who will travel by metro – so the card could be used for them. It was a win win situation for everyone including metro users.
They will just have to keep a pre paid card which can be used and recharged easily at metro stations themselves.
This collaboration between Metro and SBI is the reason that SBI Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya is coming for the 30th September program to Nagpur herself.