Apparently I’m a militant.
[Myki] has been slagged by public transport militant Daniel Bowen by reference to the hideous early 1980’s hit ‘Hey Mickey’ recently revived in cheerleader films of dubious repute. — Vexnews — news for patriots (?!)
Hmmmmm.
Interesting that they linked to a blog post where I thought I was quite impartial about Myki. Well, except for the title.
Meanwhile, the results are in from Myki’s first week on Geelong’s buses. Noted flaws include:
- passengers being over-charged, with the system charging for multiple two-hour tickets within a single two-hour period
- no lower limit on the amount that can be added to a Myki ticket on buses, leading to some users paying small amounts of money to the bus driver each time they board — the very type of time-consuming transaction Myki is supposed to eliminate
- slow response times when scanning on and off
- resultant slow “dwell” times for buses, causing delays
- little or no information about fares available at bus stops or on-board buses
- single-use tickets showing no expiry time or cost information
- machines periodically not working, including not registering scans
- uncertainty and contradictory information about the penalty fare for failing to scan off at the end of a trip
- inadequate help from the Myki call centre, with operators giving excuses such as “I’m not in Geelong”, despite Geelong being the only city to be using Myki so far
Not a bad little list of problems for something that had already been trialled and tested internally, and then with real passengers on the Bellarine Peninsula!
No doubt some of these can be fixed, and to their credit, the Transport Ticketing Authority has been in touch with the PTUA Geelong branch to discuss them.
But others appear to be bigger design flaws and may be tougher to fix.
Time will tell.
Just remember folks: this is your tax-payer dollars (and quite a few of them) at work.
10 replies on “More on Myki”
Seems to be going well then. Will probably end up on the scrap-heap like the NSW ticketing system. Public pressure could ultimately force the government to cave-in on this despite the gazillions already spent.
Realistically I suspect it’s too far gone to scrap now. Lots of hardware has already been installed.
That’s Andrew Landeryou’s blog. He’s a well-known, bankrupt political simpleton with a tendency to reveal the person details of his political opponents. His nickname, deservingly so, is bankruptus maximus.
Wonder why a system like Hong Kong’s Octopus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card) couldn’t have been adopted/adapted. It was rolled out gradually and without any fuss (at least I don’t remember any) and works like a charm. Can use it all over the place (extensively non PT too) and HK has multi-modal very high useage public transport.
@Daniel
I always wondered the same thing as Tony. Why could we ‘copy’ the existing systems available in cities like Singapore, London, or Hong Kong?
Those systems work very well, satisfaction is high, and they’ve been in operation for years. With just a few adjustments to accommodate small differences like trams, etc., we could have an effective system ‘transplanted’ from another region.
Why the heck is it so hard to get right? Like MK said, the perfect models are in London and Singapore. I think they’re just cutting their noses off to spite their faces at this point.
Apart from the glitches on the bus trial, and that is perhaps all they are, this system will be a disaster for tram passengers and tram operators. In the city at a single stop, twenty five people might get off a tram and fifty get on. That is 25 to scan off and 50 to scan on. Multiply this by a few stops and it is the stuff of nightmares.
Why they didn’t adapt an existing system is a really good question. And some of those cities have trams.
One theory is the state wanted complete control over the intellectual property on the system. Open interfaces and so on will allow any combination of parts to evolve over the next few decades.
But whether this is actually used, and whether it’s worth the gazillion dollars it’s costing to do this is quite another question.
The interesting question is that, given the Dept Transport has now twice, at enormous cost, tried to get a high tech ticketing system that will tell them exactly how many people are going when and where – who has driven this? Is the Department determined to get this information at whatever cost? Is it key people or is that the culture within the Department?
More on Andrew Landeryou. He has been a Director or shareholder of the companies below. He also has extensive offsore asset holdings.
• Multicentre Australia
• Global Tertiary Solutions
• Century Bet
• IQ Corporation Pty Ltd
• IQ First Pty Ltd
• IQ Interactive Pty Ltd
• IQ Services Pty Ltd
• IQ Sports Pty Ltd
• Message IQ Pty Ltd
• Marbain Pty Ltd
• Lush Bar Australia Pty Ltd
• Sunrock Ltd (Hong Kong Nominee Company where Landeryou sent the $1 million from the Marbain scam)
• Institutional Services Pty Ltd (a company owned and operate by Landeryou that subcontracted cleaning and building services from MUSU using non-union labour. The contracts were illegally awarded to this company by MUSU).
• Arrowhead Media Sales Pty Ltd (Landeryou sent $100,000 from the Marbain swindle back from Cyprus to this company)
• Avonwood Ltd (Cyprus Nominee Company where Landeryou sent the Marbain swindle $1 million from HK Sunrock)
• Aussie Gourmet Bites Pty Ltd
• Zoe’s Emporium Pty Ltd
• Australian Halal Poultry Pty Ltd
• Optima Property Development Group Pty Ltd
• Training Events Pty Ltd
• National Retail Investments Pty Ltd
• Lan Capital
• BV Sachsen Group Australia Pty Ltd
• IQ OIL
• Pacific Insight Marketing Pty Ltd
• Turning Point Debt Solutions Pty Ltd
• Citizens Against Poverty Pty Ltd (a fake charity set up by Landeryou)