Barra Station to see commercial spaces despite no certainty in new station’s popularity

Several factors make it difficult to evaluate the LRT Barra station’s popularity, LRT Company chair Ho Cheong Kei told the press yesterday.

The LRT Company organized a media preview of the Barra station and the Barra Extension of the railway yesterday afternoon.

On the sidelines of the event, Ho made the response when asked how much charm will be added to the railway after the opening of the Barra Extension and station on Dec. 8.

Believing there will be more passengers with an additional station, he said it was difficult to give any figure.

He cited several factors that cause the difficulty, including the number of tourists, the intention of residents to use the railway and the location of people’s workplaces.

He pledged constant observation to evaluate the frequency of carriage departures. Under normal circumstances, he added, trains will depart at intervals ranging from 7.5 to 10 minutes.

Several lawmakers have said the low frequency of departures had discouraged people from using the railway.

Lawmaker Ron Lam has also criticized the LRT Company’s lack of a publicized departure schedule for making time management impossible.

Ho said “technical difficulties” was why there was no publicized schedule when the matter was raised yesterday.

He said data needs to be extracted from the system to create a schedule, which in his opinion is very difficult. He also said system crashes must be avoided during the data extraction process.

Ho was reserved when asked how many workers are needed for the new station. He said evaluations will be conducted constantly.

Currently, although LRT ticketing counters accept a variety of payment methods, these methods are not applicable to direct gate entry, unlike in Kaohsiung Metro, for example, where entry gates accept tap-and-go debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, as well as UnionPay and Line Pay transit QR codes.

When asked about more payment options at entry gates, the LRT chief said the company is open to the proposal, adding that “Macau is set to further merge with the Greater Bay Area and mainland payment options should be introduced.”

Nonetheless, reiterating his style of one step at a time, he told the public to have patience and things will happen in stages.

He said the LRT started with single-journey tickets and the LRT stored-value card only, before introducing Macau Pass.

When asked by the Times what technical difficulties the company is facing in introducing more payment methods, the LRT chief raised the topic of commercial challenges.

“And when it comes to commercial challenges, please allow me to refrain from commenting too extensively,” Ho said.

The new station has set aside spaces for commercial or retail activities. Ho said a tender has recently been opened, but currently no information as to which operators or what type of operations can be disclosed.

On interchange discounts with buses, Ho said negotiations had been conducted but had not yet borne fruit.

Barra Station to open Friday

The first train from Barra to Taipa will depart at 6:30 a.m. Friday. At the same time, a train will depart from the Jockey Club towards Barra. The LRT Company head, Ho Cheong Kei, said a gift pack containing a glass paperweight resembling the LRT carriage and a special-edition LRT stored-value card will be distributed to passengers on the first train from Barra at the station.

LRT Co. reiterates stance on ‘constant service improvement’

In response to lawmaker Lam Lon Wai’s written inquiry, director of Transport Kelvin Lam cited the LRT Company as pledging constant service improvements.

In his inquiry dated Nov. 3, the lawmaker said that on an evening in October, when a fireworks show ended, groups of spectators rushed to different types of transport to either head home or to their next stops. The condition further deteriorated with traffic detours and road suspensions.

The lawmaker said that despite LRT ticketing counters accepting multiple payment methods, these methods cannot be used directly at gates.

“The number of available methods is quite limited,” the lawmaker noted, citing neighboring regions as allowing pre-ticketing and entry by payment QR codes.

There was another occasion of passenger congestion at ticketing counters. Another evening saw long queues of concert-goers lining up for LRT single-entry tickets at the Cotai West station after a concert. There were complaints claiming the railway accepts too few payment methods at entry gates.

As such, the lawmaker asked the government how it would improve the use of LRT by means such as cross-transport interchange privileges or perks, and the introduction of a wider choice of payment methods at gates.

In response, the LRT Company was only cited as saying that the frequency of departures will increase during or following major events to better relocate event goers. Director Lam also noted that public bus operators will also be instructed to deploy more buses during and following major events. AL