Book DTC ticket on app, get 10% off on bus fares

The proposal to offer the discount was approved by the Delhi Cabinet, chaired by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday.

Passengers travelling in Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and cluster buses will get a 10% discount if they buy their journey tickets from the city administration’s One Delhi mobile application and other partner apps, transport minister Kailash Gahlot said on Saturday.

Transport minister Kailash Gahlot said the government has revamped the One Delhi app which, in addition to e-ticketing, will also show real time information and ETA of buses and the nearest available EV (electric vehicles) charging stations. (Sanjeev Verma/ Hindustan Times)

The proposal to offer the discount was approved by the Delhi Cabinet, chaired by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday. However, the 10% discount offer is going to go live for the public from Friday even as its final round of testing will start from Monday, and will last for 2-3 days, transport minister Kailash Gahlot said.

In the same meeting, the Cabinet also approved the bid for procurement of 160 low-floor air conditioned buses that will be on the roads by November.

Transport minister Kailash Gahlot said the government has revamped the One Delhi app which, in addition to e-ticketing, will also show real time information and ETA of buses and the nearest available EV (electric vehicles) charging stations. Passengers can also book pink tickets, meant for female passengers as their journeys are free of cost. Besides, monthly or yearly bus passes can also be issued using the app by just scanning the QR code inside the bus, and selecting ticket fare or source and the destination stop. The app is available both in English and Hindi.

“The Delhi government, in the past few years, has been striving to revolutionise how public transport is perceived in the country. The Cabinet’s decision is a welcome step especially in the middle of the ongoing pandemic, to reduce the spread of the virus through surface contact. When we launched the common mobility card in 2018, we saw a large number of private car users shift to public transport. I am hoping that state of the art buses, with increased surveillance and safety features, and right incentives like the ones we’re offering through e-ticketing apps and the common mobility card, will be a much-needed push for the people of Delhi to adopt public vehicles as their default mode of transport,” said Gahlot.

The Delhi government’s contactless ticketing app has been undergoing extensive trials under a special task force since July 2020, and initial trials have shown that tickets booked through the app account for 6% of total ticketing being done, a government spokesperson said.

Delhi has a combined (DTC and cluster) fleet size of 6,750 and witnesses an average daily ridership of 4.9 million passengers, which is more than Metro’s average daily ridership of about 2.5 million.

A senior transport official said the move is also expected to save the government’s revenue on printing, manpower and data storage. The department also envisages the app-based ticketing system to help in generation of better passenger on-boarding data that can be analysed to rationalise routes and provide better services.