Quito opens its underground metro amid excesses and long lines

The Quito Metro, built by the Spanish company Acciona, began its commercial operation on Tuesday with long lines to purchase tickets and still not operating at full capacity, with reduced hours and some stations still closed.

The concentration of travelers to purchase their tickets at stations such as Quitumbe, in the south of the Ecuadorian capital, led to the formation of long lines, while the ticket system presented inconsistencies at times that slowed down sales.

In some cases, the wait was as long as half an hour, which caused groups of users to decide to enter without paying, according to local media reports.

The mayor of Quito, Santiago Guarderasacknowledged that “there are inconveniences that will be polished to offer, in a short time, an impeccable service to the people of Quito”.

The commercial operation of the Quito Metro began with the sale of QR codes to enter the facilities, in the absence of the definitive collection system being installed in the coming months.

At the moment, the trains will only run six hours a day, divided into two time slots that coincide with peak hours, which go from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and from 4:40 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Likewise, this phase began with only ten of the fifteen stations operating, while the remaining five remain closed to the public.

The authorized stations are El Labrador, Iñaquito, La Carolina, El Ejido, San Francisco, Magdalena, El Recreo, Solanda, Morán Valverde and Quitumbe.

The fare has been established at 45 cents for a single trip, at 22 cents for students up to high school and over 65 years of age, and at 10 cents for people with disabilities.

Construction of the Quito Metro began ten years ago, in 2013, with a cost of more than US$2 billion, and has 15 stations along almost 23 kilometers and a fleet of 18 trains that will operate for the first 6 years a consortium formed by the company Transdev and the Colombian Metro de Medellín. The system is a single line that runs through the Ecuadorian capital from south to north.

Since dawn, hundreds of passengers congregated at the south station, where there were two ticket offices that did not allow an adequate flow of citizens, which triggered protests and dozens jumping the controls to get on the wagons. Shortly after the incidents the operators allowed free access to avoid further problems.

The system worked in recent weeks with invitation tickets so that citizens become familiar, but the number of people on its first day of operations tripled. After the initial failures, the situation returned to normal, to which the opening of more ticket offices in the stations with the highest concentration of passengers contributed.

The metro has not yet been formally inaugurated and there is no date for it, among other reasons, because at the end of this month the new mayor of the capital, Pabel Munoz, who will set the schedule for it. Its inauguration had successive postponements because the authorities had not decided which company would operate it, a task that was finally handed over to a consortium led by Metro Medellín.

With information from EFE and Associated Press