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If you expected instant relief, you’re not getting it.
“The first day of the implementation of the Beep cards at Metro Rail Transit stations was greeted with complaints as passengers complained of long lines at teller’s booths on Monday, October 5,” reports Gerard dela Pena on InterAksyon.com.
The report noted: “Not a few commuters said nothing has changed even with the new ticketing system. Some turnstiles at the Ayala station even broke down due to technical glitches and needed immediate repairs.”
So, what’s the explanation for the snafu?
Peter Maher, CEO of AF Payments Inc., said, “It’s the newness of the system. The train operators are using new machines for the first time to issue Beep cards, to issue single journey tickets. A lot of the public have questions: How does it work? How much for the cost? What’s the load? And so this conversation takes much longer than the normal purchase.”
AF Payments is a consortium led by Ayala Corporation and Metro Pacific Investments Corporation (MPIC) that won the Automated Fare Collection System (AFCS), one of the public-private partnership (PPP) projects of the Aquino administration.
