Derwent wrote:Metro-Tas quit?
First I've heard....
Just got back on Thursday evening from a week in Melbourne. Not exactly a holiday, attending to family business but I still had fun!
Can't believe how well public transport works up there....
Myki with its tag on tag off works well and all week I only saw one person use cash and that was on a tram which has a ticket machine on board.
Get on or off any door, two readers on each door so no bottlenecks.
The train system was great too, would have been going to get there as quick by car!
Unfortunately the Myki really doesn't work that well in my experience driving here, and I think any bus driver will tell you similar stories. The readers are unbelievably touchy and slow, almost guaranteed to crash at least once a day, or any time the bus power is turned off, takes about 5 minutes to boot, where 90% of the time it boots into out of service mode and needs another reboot etc. Touching off used to be on trams but it caused bottlenecks so it got cancelled (unless all your journey is in Zone 2). Unfortuatnely on the bus, touching off means our stopping times a longer as people no longer can just jump off, there is a big queue at doors to touch off etc. - doesn't help the readers are so slow and touchy. Before set-down was really quick - now set-down is just as long as pick-up. Doesn't help when people don't get off at the rear door liek they should (unless they need the front door for access/kneeler etc.) Trams work well as far as myki goes - but buses they are not that helpful. Greencard system worked far better - quicker, more reliable, didn't muck up as much. Also, we don't have enough ticket inspectors on buses so we have a lot of fare evasion. Passengers just walk on and sit down sometimes with no intention of getting a ticket. Our policy is not to ask for a ticket so fare evasion is pretty rife. If I didn't ask people to get a metcard when their myki was declined (depends what sort of person they look like - i.e. an aggressive person) I would say 10-15% of all passengers would never pay a thing.
If you live near trams, you're fine. When you go further out and its buses and trains (or even worse, just buses) things start to get pretty inconvenient pretty quickly.
Sorry about the myki whinge - just thought I'd let you know it also has its problems. Which it shouldn't for $1.5 billion of spending.
Cheers
