rogf24 wrote:There really needs to be a common Sydney-wide app for booking all these on-demand services. Instead what we have now is one app for each operator or region, it's very fragmented now which does hold back growth. The NSW Government should be in charge of this common app,
While my first reaction is that this would have been desirable to cut costs, I suspect that it would have added costs to the trials. My assumption is that these apps and the booking, timetabling and dispatch system they tie into probably haven't been written from scratch but rather they have been acquired from software suppliers and merely customised for each operators needs. I leave it for others to do the detective work to identify the suppliers but obviously one of them is Bridj which might have been used by the other participants if not for their acquisition by Transit Systems. A common app to book the various trials would have required work in some form to integrate the various systems. Given the small percentage of people who need the ability to book multiple schemes I am not convinced that it would be worth the effort at the trial stage. If the web versions of these sites can accomodate mobile devices without loss of functionality perhaps even less reason. I would expect a common app when these services beome integral to the transport system.
While it is probably desireable not to snuff out competitive advantage or increase integration costs by not dictating that every operator use common software or interfaces for the trial I am concerned that having to acquire such software would have been a barrier to entry, The fact that all operators are bus operators and do not include any existing transport on demand operators suggests to me that the process for the selection of participants in the trial was flawed.
and while they're at it, Opal integration.
That will probably come too,
eventually, Given that the difficulties in reconciling Opal with advance payment it may just have to wait until Opal transitions from a stored value card to an account based system.