Re: Yarra Trams Article in Sunday Age

[Railvic <railvic@primus.com.au>]

Dave Proctor wrote:
> 
> "Railvic" <railvic@primus.com.au> wrote in message
> 3A7679A3.1AFED2D0@primus.com.au">news:3A7679A3.1AFED2D0@primus.com.au...
> 
> > Can you suggest how to make "easy to buy tickets and relatively hard to
> > evade" then the current setup?  You let the machine know the type of
> > ticket you need, insert your payment, then collect your ticket.  How
> > hard is that and it is no different than buying tickets from a person?
> > It is interesting to see people have no trouble using bank ATMs or play
> > a pokie machine, but have such great difficulty in using ticket machines
> 
> Yeah, this is the argument that annoys me. It is not too difficult to buy
> tickets on board, and if, as some people have argued, people do not know,
> why not conduct an education campaign? Ads on TV, in newspapers, letterbox
> drops, etc.

Unfortunately I suspect there are many illiterate customers.  In fact, I
have shown a few people how to use those ticket machines after they told
me what they want - by breaking up their sentence into "keywords" ...

> > ...  Furthermore, the range of tickets available have not changed from
> > the pre-automated ticketing days
> 
> Actually, they have - you could buy daily tickets before off a conductor,
> you can't now.

Yes, beside those machines onboard of trams, small and large TVMs at
railway stations will issue daily tickets ...

> > and the zone tickets are not new in Melbourne either!!
> 
> Just as an exercise, I took a couple of umpiring friends out for the day -
> one from Sydney, one from Auckland, and one from New York - and I let them
> try and figure out the ticket we needed to get to Puffing Billy from North
> Melbourne - I gave them a brochure detailing the fare system, and they were
> able to do so, without any assistance from me. So it is not as hard as
> people make it out to be.

Many people I have come across don't do "homework" before they leave
home to go somewhere (including checking street directory, transport
timetable/fare information, etc.).  I am surprised they have ventured
out of their front door and know which way to turn next!!  Dave in the
example above, you have done necessary "homework" with your visiting
friends, obviously you have no trouble ... but try to tell those who
want to be lazy and then they get angry because they have missed their
connecting service or got off at the wrong stop ...

Railvic