Railways relaxes distance restriction on booking tickets through ‘UTS’ mobile app

In a relief to commuters, the railways will now allow them to book unreserved tickets on the UTS mobile app from a distance of upto 20 km from a station on non-suburban sections, up from 5 km now.

In suburban areas, the distance has been enhanced to 5 km from the existing 2 km.

The Railway Board issued new instructions to all zones on November 7, giving effect to the new proximity norms, a longstanding demand of commuters travelling in general coaches of daily passenger trains and distance trains.

Before these changes, the Railways’ Unreserved Ticket Booking System (UTS) app allowed commuters in non-suburban sections to book a ticket from upto 5 kms from a station. For the suburban section, the uniform distance restriction for booking ticket through UTSonMobile was 2 km which has now been enhanced to 5 km.

“Any Zonal Railway which desires to further increase this restriction of 5 km up to 10 km shall inform CRIS of the actual distance restriction desired,” the railways stated. The UTS mobile app allows booking of season tickets, monthly passes and platform tickets, saving passengers time and sparing them long queues at ticket counters.

The mobile app works on smartphones with Android, IOS and Windows versions of operating system and can be downloaded free of cost.

Payment can be made through wallets like R- Wallet, PayTM, Mobikwik or through Internet banking. This facility is a big leap in unreserved ticketing and a boon to the rail users, said a railway press release.