All BR stations should come under online ticketing to reduce people’s suffering
The online ticketing system of Bangladesh Railway (BR) covers only 85 of its 483 stations, forcing travelers to buy tickets from the counters at the stations or from scalpers at significantly higher prices.
Even though the railway launched the online ticketing system way back in 2007, only the tickets for the 106 intercity trains are sold online.
Tickets for more than 100 mail, commuter, and local trains, and even trains to India are not available online.
However, the Indian Railway sells all train tickets and platform tickets online.
The poor online ticketing coverage of Bangladesh Railway goes against the government’s vision of Digital Bangladesh.
The government invested thousands of crores of taka in the railway sector over the last decade to improve railway services, but BR failed to properly utilise it due to a lack of capacity, and the poor ticketing system was a reflection of it.
BR does not have any dedicated IT cell and it is entirely dependent on vendors for the limited online ticketing services.
Between 2008-09 and 2022-23 fiscal years, the government allocated Tk 107,645 crore to BR under the annual development programme.
However, the state-run transport agency could only spend Tk 71,113 crore, which is 66.06 percent of the total, until October last year, documents show.
The finance ministry recently suggested that all stations be brought under the online ticketing system to reduce people’s suffering and ensure transparency in ticket sales.
We hope the online ticketing system will significantly reduce misappropriation of the revenue by railway staff and will make it profitable.
We think there must be a ticket purchase machine in all stations where people can buy tickets by cash.
Railways should be modernised and new features should be added there, as we see the government’s claim of development mismatches with the ground reality.
There are many cost effective models and we should focus on self-sustaining railways.
