Between January 1 and December 26 last year, the Metro Rail Transit 3 experienced 517 glitches, translating to an average of 10 in a week or more than one in a day.
The final tally would definitely be higher—on the last day of 2017, the MRT again had to unload passengers because of a signaling problem. The suspension of the southbound operations lasted more than an hour on Sunday morning, New Year’s Eve.
These glitches have given the MRT 3 its notoriety. The Department of Transportation was quick to issue a statement on its efforts to address the perennial glitches.
“In its commitment to progressively address the issues beleaguering the Metro Rail Transit Line 3, the Department of Transportation MRT-3 team recently completed the procurement of the first batch of various spare parts required for the system’s maintenance,” it said.
The delivery of spare parts has started and will continue for the next three months, according to a transport official.
The department is also looking at a new maintenance provider for the MRT 3 by May. The engagement of the provider is supposedly tied to the grant of official development assistance from Japan. The loan will be for the upkeep of the rail system.
The contract with the former maintenance provider was terminated in November 2017 because of poor performance.
All these assurances give the riding public some reason to be hopeful at the beginning of the year. These hundreds of thousands of riders deserve better times. After all, they have continued to patronize the train service despite the inconvenience of long lines and crowded coaches, and the dangers of signaling and other glitches.
A year and a half into the Duterte administration, transport officials no longer have the luxury of blaming the previous administration for this inherited problem. The solutions should have come sooner, but at this point, the public is already happy that solutions seem to be on the horizon at all.