{"id":24240,"date":"2014-08-29T13:32:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T05:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=24240"},"modified":"2014-08-29T19:13:10","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T11:13:10","slug":"grace-poe-rides-mrt3-sees-need-for-train-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/08\/29\/grace-poe-rides-mrt3-sees-need-for-train-upgrade\/","title":{"rendered":"Grace Poe rides MRT3, sees need for train upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Senator<\/a>
Senator Grace Poe lining up in the ticket line of the MRT3 North Avenue station in Quezon City. Photo courtesy of Myrnalyn Lavapie\/Senator Grace Poe’s Office<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA — After lining up for 40 minutes in the ticket line, Senator Grace Poe rides the train in North Avenue station of the Metro Rail Transit 3 in Quezon City, to experience for herself what it feels to ride on a Friday\u2019s morning rush hour.<\/p>\n

Poe will chair a senate hearing to investigate the derailed trip of MRT3 that injured 36 people.<\/p>\n

“I want to be able to speak from first-hand experience what a passenger experiences riding the MRT,\u201d Poe told Rappler in a text message, when asked about her unannounced MRT3 ride.<\/p>\n

Despite experiencing some glitches along the way, Poe said she had a \u2018pleasant\u2019 experience riding on the coach exclusively for women.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Poe\u2019s son, Brian Poe said in a text message sent to Rappler, that her mother\u2019s ride was unplanned.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe just woke up and decided, \u2018Today I\u2019m going to take the MRT to see for myself what it\u2019s like during rush hour,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Though some lawmakers are planning to draft a law that will upgrade the train system in the country, most of them, are not regular commuters.<\/p>\n

Need for upgrade<\/p>\n

Travelling from end to end of the train, Poe arrived at Taft Station in Pasay City almost two hours later, including the time she waited lining up for tickets.<\/p>\n

The senator, who travelled without media trail, nor an army of security and staff members, saw the inconveniences of traveling through train.<\/p>\n

Poe\u2019s train ticket got stuck in the ticketing machine. This was after several minutes of standing to line up at the ticket booth.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo courtesy of Myrnalyn Lavapie\/Senator Grace Poe’s Office<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Poe told Rappler that although the line was moving at the North Avenue station, a non-functional escalator caused a bottleneck of passengers. Her train ticket also got stuck in the ticketing machine, she said.<\/p>\n

She also noticed that the elevators of the train were not working saying that it will be difficult for persons with disabilities to travel by train.<\/p>\n

Despite the inconveniences, Poe said the train is still \u201cnot a hopeless situation\u201d adding that, \u201cthe government just has to step up its efforts in the proper maintenance of the trains and the station.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA — After lining up for 40 minutes in the ticket line, Senator Grace Poe rides the train in North …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":24241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,1145,95],"tags":[7607,7606],"class_list":["post-24240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-headline","category-news-ph","tag-mrt-ride","tag-poe","mauthors-lei-fontamillas","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}