Tokyo, Japan (AHN) -- Thousands of Japanese commuters got a free train ride to work at 662 railway and subway stations in the Tokyo area on Friday morning, local newspapers reported. Train operators allowed the commuters to pass through 4,400 electronic ticket gates that temporarily failed to operate without using their prepaid access cards.

The decision to give the passengers free access was to avoid confusion during rush hour.

The cause of the ticket gate malfunction was not immediately determined. But railway officials suspect the problem was caused by a glitch in the programming that links the gates to computer servers of the integrated-circuit fare cards used by passengers.

Two fare cards-the Suica of JR East and Pasmo of other metropolitan subway and rail operators-can be used to ride trains within the Tokyo metropolitan area.

The affected ticket gates, all built by Nippon Signal Co., turned on at around 9:20 a.m. local time on 150 Tokyo Metro subway stations and at around 10 a.m. at 190 stations run by JR East, according to Kyodo News.

Nippon Signal issued a statement taking responsibility of the malfunction. It also apologized to the public.

It was the second time that Nippon Signal gates malfunctioned. Last December its gates failed to allow Suica card users to pass due to system errors.

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