Long queues and and a even longer list of ticket-less travellers seems to have spurred the railways' policymakers to go for innovation. The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) has invited tenders for an ICT-enabled unreserved ticketing system (UTS) which would allow passengers to book an unreserved ticket on their mobile phones without having to stand in a queue at the station of origin.

With the UTS in place, one can use a mobile phone application to generate a facsimile ticket sent in a message. The facsimile image or the 'smart-image', as the railways terms it, would then be validated at the station of origin. Later, the message would get automatically deleted after the expiry of a validity period. The ticket will be non-editable and non-transfferable. The railways has clearly indicated in its tender document that the application needs to be compatible with low-end mobile phones. Payment is to be made through the cash/credit that the passenger would be maintaining for his mobile phone network services.

"The service is intended to increase the revenue by bringing down the number of ticket-less travellers. These travellers don't buy tickets as unreserved tickets are mostly bought at the source station just before a journey and most ticket-less travellers prefer to travel without a ticket rather than miss the train," CRIS has stated in the tender.