Metro commuters can now use one card for ride on three lines

Commuters in Mumbai can now use a common mobility card for metro trains on three operational lines in the city, covering a length of more than 30km. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority has partnered with the State Bank of India to launch the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC), which has already sold 168,324 cards on two metro lines. The card is now compatible with all automatic fare collection gates at the 12 stations on the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar route. The ministry of housing and urban affairs introduced the NCMC to provide a unified payment option for various transit operators.

Commuters can now use a common mobility card for taking metro trains on the three operational lines in the city - Blue (Metro 1), Red (Metro 7), and Yellow (Metro 2A), covering a length of more than 30 km.

Metro commuters can now use one card for ride on three lines

Nearly 11 months after the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) launched ‘Mumbai1’, the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC), for Metro 2A and 7 lines, the Mumbai Metro One has made all its automatic fare collection (AFC) gates at the 12 stations on the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar route compatible with the card.

Since its introduction, 1,68,324 ‘Mumbai1’ cards have been sold on Metro 7 (Gundavali to Dahisar East) and Metro 2A (Dahisar to Andheri West), constituting almost 40% of the ridership, while the remaining tickets have been sold at the counters, officials said and added MMRDA had partnered with the State Bank of India for NCMC.

A spokesperson for Mumbai Metro One said, “All fare collection gates now can accept both existing metro cards and NCMC through a single card reader. The enhanced AFC system can accommodate NCMC issued by various banks and will facilitate approximately 7,000 transactions daily.”

At present, Mumbai Metro One has 125 entry and 122 exit gates. Passengers can now find the symbol of ‘Wi-Fi’ on the card reader which earlier used to be that of a ‘pink’ and ‘blue’ card. The existing metro card is pink while NCMC is blue.

“The metro rail authorities should also do something about the quality of scanners used for mobile tickets. At times we scan more than once to register the ticket,” GV Reddy, a resident of Andheri, said.

Sources said a majority of these AFC gates are situated at Ghatkopar and Andheri – two of their largest and most congested stations on Metro 1. The Ghatkopar station has 27 AFC gates each for entry and exit while Andheri station has 16 entry gates and 20 exit gates.

The Mumbai Metro One operates 408 trips every day and caters to over 4.6 lakh commuters on weekdays. The spokesperson said in over nine years of operation, these AFC gates have handled more than 25 million transactions each and catered to 900 million commuters in all.

The ministry of housing and urban affairs has introduced NCMC to provide a unified payment option for various transit operators, facilitating not only travel payments but also retail shopping.