Tech Shout!

As the crowds rush into the buses of Mumbai, India, it becomes tough to manage the balance and digging into your pockets for the bus fare makes it all the more worse. To make the journey safer and convenient, BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport) uses their Go Mumbai prepaid card in the best possible way which is supported by Linux. To add in further features to this system, the buses will deploy a device on the entry (back door) and exit (front door) of the bus.

While entering the bus, the commuter has to swipe the card and while boarding off the bus, the commuter has to swipe the card once again on the device, this will decide the distance traveled by the commuter and charge the exact fire using the Go prepaid card. The devices connect themselves using LAN connection and accordingly communicate the distance traveled by the passenger.

From the reading of these devices, the fare collections are digitally transferred to individual float accounts on back office servers which operate on Sun’s Solaris operating system. The current method used for the Go card fare chargers is by the conductor in the bus who scans the card using a pocket device. But now there will be no requirement of human interference with the devices mounted on the exit and entry of the buses.

The new system allows passengers to travel on a cashless basis and they can use their card conveniently eliminating the weight of currency coins in the pocket. Currently forty buses carry this device and the Go Mumbai prepaid cards are easily available from BEST’s bus depots and smaller outposts.