Senator Grace Poe on Friday, September 30 asked the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to come up with an effective solution to address the looming problem involving the shortage of ‘’beep’’ cards to spare commuters from further woes.
At the Senate finance sub-committee hearing led by Poe on the DOTr budget, DOTr officials said there are some 400,000 stored-value beep cards in circulation that would expire soon but it still has a significant supply of singe-journey tickets that a passenger could buy each time they ride the MRT or LRT.
"But if you buy a single-use ticket, magbabayad ka rin naman e mano-mano pa rin (you still pay), Hindi 'yan solusyon (That is not s solution),” Poe, chairwoman of the Senate public services committee, pointed out.
Asked by Poe, DOTr officials said commuters could not buy their single-journey tickets in advance, and every purchased single-journey ticket must be used within two hours.
"'Wag nang dagdagan ng palamuti ang mga salita ninyo (Dont add flowery words to your statements). Kaya ka nga bibili ng ilan para maiwasang pumila, e pipila ka pa rin to get that (That is why you line up to buy to avoid filing up..but you still line up to get that. What is our contingency para hindi na pipila (so that you don’t line up),” Poe asked.
The DOTr said one of the solutions is to install a machine that would extend the expiry date of the stored-value tickets for a year, and passengers can just go to any station and have their cards' expiry extended.
It also said some people have more than one stored-value card and that it has a program encouraging people to share their beep cards with their family or friends.
The DOTr said it is currently pilot-testing the payment of fares via QR ticketing code using cellphones in LRT.
“Can you develop that as soon as possible before the actual shortage is felt,” Poe asked.