Sri Lanka Railways’ newly unveiled “Pravesha” platform now lets customers purchase commuter train tickets online. Commuters can now get an e-ticket for their train fare via a credit or debit card instead of the typical over-the-counter physical ticket.
How does Pravesha work?
Making a purchase on Pravesha is pretty straightforward. After entering the required details (destination, carriage class, travel date, number of passengers), commuters can confirm the purchase and request the e-ticket via SMS and/or email. Once the payment is processed, an order confirmation screen will let you download the ticket. You will also get a publicly accessible link to your e-ticket depending on your earlier choice. At the time of writing, the platform only accepts Visa and Mastercard payments.
Terms and conditions
Apart from the obvious single-use conditions of a regular physical ticket, there are things worth noting when using the Pravesha platform.
- While you can buy 2nd class and 3rd class tickets, Pravesha doesn’t offer seat reservation tickets
- You can buy a commuter ticket up to seven days in advance online
- Purchases are limited to five passengers per order, including return tickets
- Refund requests made at least one day before the journey will be processed at up to 75% of the original ticket value
- If you opted for the return trip option, you would get separate tickets (with QR codes) for each journey
- The return ticket doesn’t need to be on the same date as the outbound journey
- You can’t buy season tickets (yet)
A much-needed digital facelift
According to Sri Lanka Railways, the train system carries at least around 3.72 million passengers daily. But despite the high usage, online ticketing hasn’t been an option for commuters in Sri Lanka until Pravesha. Daily commuters were stuck with either queuing every day at the station or at best, get a season ticket once a month for a set route.
Previously, online ticketing was limited to seat reservations on select long-distance routes through Dialog and Mobitel mobile ticketing services. However, even then customers still had to visit a railway station or designated outlet to get a printed copy of the online ticket. By March 2024, Sri Lanka Railways and SLT-Mobitel updated the seat reservation system to introduce e-tickets and e-warrants. Now, it appears the updated system has expanded to commuter trains.
The e-ticketing option for commuter tickets adds much-needed functionality to Sri Lanka’s ailing public transportation system. Prior to Pravesha, commuters would need to queue at the counter regularly to purchase physical tickets. The process is not only tedious and tiring, but can often be unnecessarily time-consuming as well, particularly if it’s a busy train station like Colombo Fort, Maradana, or Ragama.
The long road to modernizing public transport
The addition of online commuter tickets with a dedicated online platform could be an indication of more to come. An obvious next step would be to offer the same feature to season tickets and expand the online payment options. However, Sri Lankan Railways has offered little information on what to expect from Pravesha in the future.
Interestingly, last year the government announced that an open loop EMV transit card was in development. The project launched at the Southern Highway/Makumbura Multimodal Center in its first phase with plans on expanding it to the railways. The government further stated that a digital transit card would be introduced along with the physical version. It wouldn’t be too far off to imagine a tap-to-pay mechanism in the works. Although it still may be years off from becoming a reality, if at all.
Sri Lanka has been lagging behind modernizing its public transportation for many years, particularly the railway system. In recent times, several community-driven efforts stepped up to bridge the gap. For instance, sites like Dumriya (previously slr.malindaprasad.com) serves as an accessible digital train timetable as opposed to the government’s own ill-fated attempt at an official train schedule app through ICTA.
Then, larger efforts like RDMNS which operates a crowd-funded network to provide real-time alerts, live location data, and other details of the railway system. The community project even developed its own app facilitate these alerts and updates.
All in all, these projects are a clear sign that public institutes like Sri Lanka Railways have a long way to go to bridge the digital gap to offer a modernized public service. Sri Lanka doesn’t always get its national digital infrastructure right. In fact, the government’s notorious for taking on historically abysmal digital projects. But Pravesha is an apt example as to what meaningful digitalization could look like for the average Sri Lankan.
Sure, you still have to hang on the footboard or stuff yourself inside an overcrowded train. But at least you can now get on the train worrying about one less problem.
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