34 complaints have been received by the railway officials that say that many ATVMs- 20 machines in the Western Railway (WR) and 14 in the Central Railway (CR) - were damaged by angry commuters and miscreants. Another complaint was also received by the officials two weeks ago, which informed that a commuter damaged an ATVM screen with a sharp weapon at Mumbra station. Railway officials said that the damaged machine was in such a bad condition that it could not be repaired.

Five ATVM machines at Nalasopara station too were vandalized a few months ago by the commuters.

A senior railway officer informed, "Each machine costs around Rs 1.75 lakh. The screen of the machine costs around Rs 30,000 which is a huge amount. The commuters are supposed to touch the screen while using the machines; instead they bang on the touch screen. This not only reduces the efficiency of the machines, but also damages them in a long run. For this, both the Central Railway and Western Railway need to educate people on how to use the machines."

In order to create awareness among passengers on how to use these ATVMs, pamphlets have been published by both the Central and Western Railways, but this has not come as much help.

S S Gupta, chief spokesperson for the Western Railway informed, "We have been organising campaigns to educate the public on how to use these machines. This really helps popularise the use of ATVMs. Moreover, we have been also asking people to use the machines carefully through our campaigns and SMSes for a long time."

The Centre for Railway Information and Systems (CRIS), a Railway Ministry's Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) has designed the ATVM machines.

More than 300 machines -125 in Western Railway and 175 in Central Railway, have been installed at the suburban railway stations since October 2007. The basic advantage of these machines is that they not only save commuters time by avoiding the long queues, but also help the railways provide concessions to commuters.