Yesterday — the first day of the work week, no less — KRL Commuterline passengers travelled back in time (not literally) to the days of using paper tickets to ride the train due to “an upgrade and maintenance” to the e-ticketing system.
On Saturday, PT KCI, the operators of KRL Commuterline, said they began work on upgrading its e-ticketing system, which was last updated in 2013, at all 79 stations throughout the Greater Jakarta Area in order to improve efficiency and integration with other modes of public transport.
However, the task was not completed by Monday while passengers, who weren’t able to tap-and-go to enter and exit stations as usual, were forced to buy IDR3,000 paper tickets (flat fare) as a temporary substitute, creating chaotic scenes and long queues. Inevitably, there were also reports of scalpers selling the tickets for IDR5,000 to those who wished to skip long queues.
By Monday afternoon and into the evening, PT KCI reported that some electronic gates were gradually becoming operational but there were still complaints that some passengers’ electronic cards were not working.
The good news is, today, PT KCI said that all gates are functioning normally and, apparently, that means they can no longer be blamed if there are long queues of people at train stations.
“On peak hours there is a high density of passengers. So don’t just blame the ticketing system, but we have to consider the time as well,” PT KCI VP of Corporate Communications Eva Chairunisa told Kompas today.
As part of its modernization drive, KRL Commuterline replaced paper tickets with an e-ticketing system in 2013. The KRL has come a long way since then, going from once allowing the infamous rooftop riders known as “Atappers” on their trains to having relatively modern trains and stations today.
