Autosweep RFID system failure triggers heavy traffic on SLEx

PHOTO: Philhyundai.com

MANILA, Philippines — A damaged fiber optic cable in the Autosweep radio frequency identification (RFID) system caused tag readers to malfunction and triggered heavy traffic on the South Luzon Expressway (SLEx) on Thursday.

Photos and videos uploaded by netizens on Thursday showed long lines of vehicles on the northbound side of the SLEx. The Autosweep RFID electronic toll collection (ETC) system is owned and managed by the San Miguel Corporation (SMC).

Some motorists said the heavy traffic stretched as far back as the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR) Tollway.

Aside from the SLEx, other tollways operated by SMC like the STAR, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Expressway (NaiaX), and Skyway also encountered problems with their RFID-linked electronic toll tag readers as all these also use the Autosweep RFID system.

In a statement posted on its Twitter account as of 1:13 p.m. of Thursday, SLEx and SMC Infrastructure explained that the error was traced to faulty Autosweep RFID tag readers that were affected by a damaged fiber optic cable.

SMC Infrastructure added that its electronic toll collection operation had been restored.

“ETC operations on SLEx, NaiaX, and STAR have been restored following disruption to our supplier’s network caused by damaged fiber optic cables. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our motorists,” SMC Infrastructure said.

“We are doing everything we can to ensure this incident does not happen again,” it added.

READ: Solons to DOTr: Fast-track implementation of tollways’ RFID interoperability

/MUF