Chennai: If you are living anywhere within 500 meters along the metro rail corridor in the city, you can soon expect some shops in the neighbourhood to sell “easy recharge” for the soon to be commissioned metro rail too. CMRL (Chennai Metro Rail Limited) has planned to simplify and increase patronage to its smart card based tickets by replicating telecom/internet/DTH service providers.

CMRL will engage franchisees to facilitate easy recharge of metro smart cards (tickets). “We have planned to engage shops located within 500 meters along the metro rail corridor,” CMRL sources revealed to Deccan Chronicle.

“The franchisee based ticket recharge will enable even ordinary people without Internet access at home or work place to use smart cards instead of buying tokens sold at the counter for every commute,” sources added.

CMRL is working out the modalities to select franchisees and legalities involved in doing business with them. Commuters can recharge their smart cards for a minimum of Rs 100 at the shops. However, CMRL has not fixed the maximum recharge amount and deposit fee for the smart cards yet.

Use of smart cards, instead of tokens, will make metro rail travel cheaper. If a passenger bound to Alandur from Koyambedu breaks his journey at Vadapalani and exits the station, he will have to buy a fresh ticket to resume his journey to Alandur. This will not be the case in smart card as it only deducts the money for the distance travelled.

“The system only reads the smart card at the boarding station. The money gets deducted only at the exiting station. Hence a passenger only pays for the actual distance travelled and not a penny more,” CMRL sources explained.

When asked about the possibility of a government agency engaging franchisees, CMRL managing director Pankaj Kumar Bansal agreed to having contemplated it and said, “BSNL is doing it. Ours will also work the same way.”

CMRL had made a deal with State Bank of India to use its credit and debit cards as metro smart tickets. Also, smart cards can be topped up at the kiosks in metro stations by feeding the card number and using one’s credit/debit cards.

If done, CMRL will be the first to introduce smart card ticket recharge at shops (through franchisees) as Delhi and Bangalore metros, where the network is already operational, only have token and online and kiosk based smart card recharge.