Coin booths don’t exist at Majestic and railway stations

Coin booths don’t exist at Majestic and railway stations
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Everyday, over six-lakh commuters pass through the platforms at BMTC Majestic bus station and over a lakh people use the city railway station.

These two boarding stations, however, do not have a single coin-operated telephone in their premises. The ones that had been installed had met an untimely end owing to the competition.

At the city railway station, which has 10 platforms and has 130 trains passing by every day, the authorities had put up two coin booths on platforms five and seven a few months ago.

“They have not been working for the past few months as they were disconnected by miscreants,” sources told this website's newspaper.

“There is no coin booth facility inside the railway station. They could have installed at least one of them on the busy platform one,” says Radha who travels between Bangalore and Ramanagaram everyday.

“Nowadays most people use cell phones but still coin booths are more affordable,” says Prahalad Rao, another commuter.

The scene is no different at BMTC Majestic bus station, one of the city’s busiest bus station. Sources in BMTC said they had installed eight ‘one rupee coin booths’ at the BMTC bus station in Majestic six months ago.

“There are around 10 regular telephone booths in the premises, all manned by disabled people. They had approached the Chief Minister saying that they were under loss because of these coin booths, which made BMTC take back all the coin booths,” the sources said.

However, another commuter, Srinivas, opined that telephone booths were better than coin booths as one could have a conversation without being disturbed by the din of the bus stand.