More posturing

In the dying days of Lyn Kosky's reign as the state minister for transport, I wrote a letter to The Age suggesting that flat fares would be a more sensible way of managing the new Myki smartcard.  At the time it was being phased in on trains, ostensibly so that the state government could say what eager little munchkins they were, keeping a major promise on public transport policy.

I'm pleased to say that the letter was published, with relatively little alteration other than fixing a dreadful grammatical howler I'd let through.

Now we're a bit more than twelve months on, and there's been talk of getting rid of, then keeping, Myki.  It's natural for the new state government to want to review the process, given poor budget management and the apparent lack of really responsible oversight of the whole project.  Myki is now operating on trams and buses, which means it is well-entrenched.

I recently started using my smartcard as the primary ticket for public transport.  It came in the mail while they were being issued free of charge, and has been sitting on my desk for a while now.  Given that my preferred mode of transport to and through the city is the bicycle, I tend not to catch trains and trams more than once or twice in an ordinary week.  All the same, I'm pleased that the system works well -- it's certainly no slower than the old Metcard system.

There are still a couple of things that annoy me.

EFTPOS transactions on Myki machines still take a small geological age to go through.  I've seen people visibly age a year or two waiting for EFTPOS transactions to clear on the old Metcard machines, and then a further year or two for the ticket to come out.  I've never understood why it should take so long, given that ordinary retail transactions by this medium are done in under 10 seconds.  I would really like to see things improved so that moving money from one card to another is not appreciably slower than feeding the machine with coins.  I know I could do this on the internet, but I choose to do it at the train station.

Swiping on and off on trams and buses is really impractical.  I know we sort of have a culture of doing this from the habit of always validating the Metcard, although this only has to be done once per change of vehicle.  Swiping on and off will grow up via incessant reminders, but this seems counterproductive with a smartcard ticketing system.  It makes sense where there is a clear barrier to entering the carriage -- such as train stations -- to calculate point-to-point fares.  It's not so sensible to do so with transport media where there is no clear barrier to exiting the vehicle.  Using an Oyster Card in London is great because you jump on the bus, swipe your card and pay £1.50.  It's easy, and you know you've done what the transport authority expects you to do by paying your fare.

Swiping your card on entry and exit is ostensibly justified on the grounds that passenger movements can be monitored in the everlasting pursuit of improved services.  I'm still at a loss to understand why one swipe isn't enough to achieve this, but perhaps I'm displaying my underlying unease about people having their movements monitored in this sort of detail.  There is an incentive to swipe off in order to avoid being charged the maximum fare.  This is a modification to existing passenger habits, where validating a Metcard happens once.  Flat fares -- say $1.50-$2.50 -- would be a far superior solution, and would encourage better use of Myki.

The new state government would be well served to consider flat fares for trams and buses before making any other moves around the ticketing system.