Chennai Metro plans to roll out national common mobility card next month

Introduced as part of ‘one nation one card’ initiative three years ago by the Centre, the smart card can be used to pay bus fare and suburban train fare, besides the parking fee in several cities

Commuters of Chennai Metro Rail will finally get to use the National Common Mobility Cards (NCMC) which can be used in several cities to travel, shop and park from December end.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, under the “One Nation One Card” initiative, introduced the  National Common Mobility Card three years ago to help commuters travel at ease and use it to pay for travel by suburban trains, city buses, metro trains and to pay the parking fee.

According to officials of Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. (CMRL), the card is ready and they plan to introduce it by the end of December. “Since it will be the initial phase of the rollout, NCMC will be given to only new users. Commuters can continue using the existing travel card. For NCMC, commuters have to show an ID proof. There are a few issues which need to be worked out with the banks and hence we need a month’s time,” an official said.

Recently, the CMRL received the certificate from National Payment Corporation of India after a team inspected all the infrastructure required before the launch of the card. When the other systems such as suburban trains and MTC too introduce the card, commuters will just have to carry one card to pay the fare. 

The CMRL will soon re-engineer the automatic fare collection (AFC) gates in the phase I extension network from Washermenpet to Wimco Nagar for facilitating the usage of NCMC and QR code ticket in all the gates. At present, only a few gates in phase I extension stations accept NCMC and QR code ticket, officials said. 

In the phase I project, which runs to a length of 45 km, all the AFC gates have been recalibrated to accept NCMC and QR code tickets. 

“There are 76 AFC gates in the phase I extension project. In most stations, there are eight gates — four for entry and four for exit. In Thiruvottiyur Theradi station alone, there are eight gates for entry and six for exit because additional gates were required to handle passenger traffic. We have called for tenders to re-engineer all the gates and it will be taken up soon,” another official said.