Moscow City Transport Drives Past
// Transport crisis happened due to computer failure
On Friday morning, over half a million of Muscovites encountered difficulties in the city’s public transport. Electronic turnstiles in trolleybuses, autobuses, trams, and subway, were not accepting their travel cards. MosGorTrans (Moscow City Transport) company acknowledged the incident happened because of the failure at its central computer, which was caused by a morning thunderstorm in Moscow.
Early on Friday morning, people in Moscow wanted to use their travel cards, as usual. However, electronic turnstiles installed in trolleybuses, autobuses, trams, and subway, were not accepting their travel cards, as if they had expired. Consequently, the people had to go buy new tickets.
The control system failure in the morning rush hour caused numerous incidents. Huge lines appeared in the subway and by the turnstiles, where some people wrangled and even fought with each other. However, some drivers of public transport turned the turnstiles off, and many subway stations let people inside detouring the turnstiles.
Soon after the incident, MosGorTrans (Moscow City Transport) company acknowledged its responsibility for it, and took the blame on itself. The company said their central computer failed because of abnormal heat and a morning thunderstorm.
MosGorTrans estimated that several hundreds of Muscovites might have encountered the difficulties that morning. The company apologized to the passengers, but could not estimate the damage caused by the computer failure.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of June 02, 2007
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