Social Acceptability of Ticket Vending Machines at the Light Railway Transit among Passengers in Metro Manila, Philippines

Abstract

This study investigated and described the concept of today’s changes in public transportation since the riding public has the option to adapt new technologies in line with digitization or to remain at their accustomed option. The researcher observed that the concept of digitization in the railway industry is not just about the creation and installation of technologies but the readiness of the commuters to accept changes to the advancement of the technologies. The topic of the research was chosen as the relevance of the riding public’s curiosity about the introduced technologies in the railway industry to have another option of payment in terms of ticketing and card reloading. Since there are Private Public Partnership (PPP) on the railway lines in Metro Manila and the fact that it is also operated by different companies, the number of installed Ticket Vending Machines (TVMs) is not equal and determined only based on the passenger flow in a Station.

Consequently, private and public operators of railway lines have their own concepts on how to increase the engagement of technologies to serve the riding public. These companies are competing to retain the market share against other modes of transportation and the loyalty of the commuters. The qualitative approach, specifically in-depth interviews and convenience sampling was utilized in this study. This research examined the concept of acceptance of technologies as this can be one of the challenges for digitization in the Philippines.