I’ve heard of rumors that the MRT no longer allows passengers to do “round-trips” but I wasn’t able to validate it until yesterday.

It’s confirmed: no more round-trips in the MRT!  In Taft Ave. station that is.  You may still do so in similar stations where the platform is between trains (Buendia, Boni, and Ortigas) but it doesn’t really make practical sense elsewhere.

This new policy makes things quite difficult for everyone, from the passengers to the management of MRT itself.  For one, Taft Ave. station doesn’t really separate alighting and boarding passengers so the security guards that have the burden of implementing this rule had to tell everyone to get off the train and secure it from being boarded again with a rope.  Some passengers of course would attempt to just go under this rope when the guards aren’t looking, but most follow, however difficult this new policy may be.

As you leave the station with a train’s worth of people, you’d realize that they had completely divided the station in half so there’s really nowhere else to go but out.  If you really want to make a round-trip, you have to re-enter the station, and that means needing another ticket.  I highly doubt that the purpose of this scheme is to increase profit from round-trip passengers, but that’s a side effect for the benefit of the MRT.  As for the passengers, it’s an added inconvenience in terms of time, effort, and cost.