SMC Infrastructure apologized yesterday Nov. 17, to all motorists affected by traffic jams along portions of the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), Skyway, NAIAx and STAR Tollway yesterday morning, resulting from a momentary network outage in its electronic toll collection system.
“Our IT teams traced the source of the downtime to a cut in our fiber optic network. We are still determining the root cause of the damage, but there are indications that a major vehicular accident may have contributed to the situation,” the company said in a statement.
To help ease traffic congestion, the firm said it deployed additional manpower to provide support for motorists. It also opened affected toll plazas and waived toll fees. All in all, this covered around 84,000 vehicles that passed through the expressways from 6am to 2pm, Thursday, November 17.
This includes motorists whose ETC accounts were deducted upon entry; they will receive electronic refunds in their Autosweep accounts. While the system was restored around 9 am, the company said decided to keep barriers at toll plazas up, to enable all affected motorists to pass through for free.