"Rīgas satiksme" to open mobile customer service centres for passengers’ comfort

Today, October 1, the implementation of the electronic payment system enters one of its most important stages – signing up for personalized e-ticket of e-talons. But as of tomorrow, October 2, four mobile customer service centres will be launched in Riga for the comfort of passengers, offering information about e-talons, as well as making photos for e-talons free of charge.

The personalized e-talons or smart card with photo, which will be registered for one user’s name, will be the main means of paying fare in public transport for those passengers enjoying municipal discounts. It will be also the most convenient means of payment for every passenger who uses public transport in Riga on a daily basis and buys one-month travel cards.

To sign up, you need to fill in a form

To apply for e-talons, you have to fill in and sign an application form developed by Rīgas satiksme. To make  the procedure easier, the signing-up procedure will be separate for each group of passengers.

On October 1-15 "Rīgas satiksme" will send 146,000 application forms by mail. They will be sent to all those who have declared their domicile in Riga, have reached the pension age and are entitled to Riga municipality discounts in public transport. The application forms will be also sent to other groups of Riga residents enjoying discounts – parents of families with many children, liquidators of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl nuclear power station, victims of political repressions and residents of social houses. Should anybody from the above groups fail to receive the application form until October 15, please don’t hesitate to call Rīgas satiksme’s toll-free information phone 80001919.

To be able to use the discounts after 1 March 2009, you must fill in the application form necessarily.

After receiving the application form, you will have to check the information it contains, confirm its correctness by your personal signature, attach a photo (3X4 cm) on a white background and using the envelope for paid reply, send the form free of charge to Rīgas satiksme until October 31. You can make a photo free of charge, as well as submit the application form you have received by mail and filled in any of "Rīgas satiksme’s" mobile customer service centres.

Personalised e-talons – not only for discount users

As the personalised e-talons not only allows to use discounts, but also offers a line of other conveniences,  everybody using Riga public transport on a regular basis or using monthly travel cards is invited to sign up for e-talons in time.

For instance, with personalised e-talons you will be able to reload your account not only in special ticket machines, but also in the Internet, you can also block the card in case of its loss. Those customers having applied for receiving the personalised e-talons in time, will receive their e-talons by mail shortly before the launch of the electronic payment system, so that they could start using it on the very first day, i.e. on March 1, 2009.

Passengers who are not entitled to discounts in public transport but want to sign up for e-talons, will be able to download the application forms in the Internet (www.rigassatiksme.lv), to receive them in Rīgas satiksme’s mobile customer service centres or in any of "Rīgas satiksme’s" more than 30 ticket trade outlets.

Mobile customer centres

To make signing up for e-talons easier, four customer service centres of "Rīgas satiksme" will be launched on October 2. Until October 9 special buses will be located in parking-lots near "Origo", "Dole", "Alfa" trade centres and at the bus terminal at Kurzemes avenue 137 (Imanta), on workdays from 10.00 till 18.00.

In the mobile customer centres, residents will be able to receive all the necessary information and to see how the electronic payment system really works.

In customer service centres, residents will be able:

• to receive application forms for personalized e-talons (except for those passengers having received the forms by mail);
• to get assistance in filling in the application forms;
• to submit completed forms (for those passengers having received it by mail and filled the min at home);
• to submit completed forms (for those having printed out the forms from the Internet);
• to make photos free of charge;
• to examine the new equipment –driver’s panel and card validator. 

In addition to mobile customer service centres, customers will be able to have their photos made and submit application forms also at "Rīgas satiksme" ticket office at Brīvības street 191, on workdays from 8:00 to 16:00.

As reported earlier, a unified electronic ticket or e–talons will be introduced in Riga public transport on March 1, 2009. It will help passengers to save their time, will eliminate the shortage of paper tickets in retail trade network, and no cash will be necessary to pay using public transport. The introduction of e-talons will not change the system of tariffs in Riga – the system of travel cards and the same tariff will be preserved, only the means of payment will change.