The Mass Rapid Transit Authority (MRTA) will cut fares and parking fees on its Purple Line electric railway by 30 to 50% on Sept 1 to woo commuters as present passenger traffic has reached only one-fifth of the target.
MRTA chairman Yodyuth Boonyatikarn said after a meeting with Purple Line concessionaire Bangkok Expressway and Metro Plc (BEM) on Wednesday that the discounts would be available only for commuters using prepaid MRT Plus ticket cards, while students would enjoy an additional 10% fare cut.
The measure would continue until the southernmost Tao Poon station of the northwestern suburban Purple Line was linked with the northern end of the inner-Bangkok Blue Line at Bang Sue.
He said the minimum fare would remain at 14 baht, but additional fares charged at every station further on will be halved from two to one baht per station.
Consequently a fare for the whole 23-kilometre-long Purple Line from Nonthaburi province to Bangkok will fall by 31% from 42 to 29 baht.
If commuters travel all the way from the northern end of the Purple Line to the southern end of the Blue Line in Hua Lamphong, the fare will drop 19% from 70 to 57 baht.
The MRTA also decided to halve parking fees for Purple Line commuters from 10 to five baht per two hours and from 1,000 to 500 baht a month.
Gen Yodyuth said he hoped the discounts would raise the number of Purple Line passengers by 30%, from 20,000 to 26,000 a day. The target set before its opening on Aug 6 was 100,000 commuters a day.
The MRTA chairman said the state enterprise would also introduce free wi-fi and food and beverage shops at Purple Line stations and arrange for local buses shuttling between the stations and communities to woo passengers.
He attributed the presently unpopularity of the Purple Line to the one-kilometre missing link to the Blue Line, high fares, and some incomplete services including stops missing platform screen doors. He said it would take a year to improve the driverless operating system of the Purple Line to end technical problems.