Re: Cost blowout on ticket machines

[morphet@bigpond.com (Morphet)]

On Wed, 25 Oct 2000 05:18:34 GMT, "Daniel Bowen"
<dbowen@custard.REMOVE.net.au> wrote:

>Anybody care to calculate how many conductors and station staff could be
>employed for this amount of money?
>

I remember reading in the newspaper (yes, I believe everything I read
in the newspaper!!) that the new ticketing system would take 5 years
to break ever (i.e. after 5 years the Gov't would have spent less
money on Onelink than if they kept Connies)

Of course that was assuming the system worked as the contract said it
would, and was not running 4+ years late (and I guess it assumed that
people actually purchased tickets from the machine in the first
place...) I could go on......

Some costs involoved in the late running of the installation of the
ticket machines were the re-employment of Contract Conductors (some
ended up having over 5 years service when their contacts were finally
cancelled in 1998)

They signed a six month contract stating they were employed until the
Ticket Machines were installed, and would not recieve a payout once
they left.    After the first six months were finished they signed
another contract which had no finish date, but just stated that they
would hang aroung until the machines were working.

Once the machines  were installed the Gov't noticed that they made an
error with the contracts (I'm not sure of the exact reason?) and they
had to pay out the contract connies, although it was not as much as a
regular payout (which was $10,000 plus $$$ for each years service)

***
The point I'm making is any savings from the Ticket Machines will be a
long way off because the costs involved in re-employing Conductors
added a lot of cost to the project!