Ticket Machines in Melbourne - Again

[jdennis@acslink.net.au]

I have posted to this newsgroup before about the ticket machine situation in
Melbourne, but mostly in regard to trams: the fact that one cannot buy
all-day tickets on a tram, and that the machines therein only take coins.

Today though I thought I might take advantage of a spare 30 minutes or so,
and purchase myself a 10-trip 2-hour ticket.  This did a couple of things for
me - firstly it removed the possibility of having to beg, borrow, steal coins
from the office when I need to go in to the City on short notice, and
secondly, saves me some money with the fare increase on 1/1/99.

It was an interesting experience.  I first drove to my local station at
Mitcham, where the ATM there won't sell me zone-1 tickets of course.  Why
these machines won't sell what people want I don't know!

So, I headed into zone-1 for my tickets.  The result of this was that the
large ATM (the only which sells these) was "temporarily out of order" at Mont
Albert, and at Surrey Hills.  This sign seems to mean that the mechanism has
beeb removed :-)

At Canterbury the machine didn't seem to be suffering from vandalism, but was
simply not working.  Finally I found a working machine at Camberwell.

One wonders how many tickets are not bought simply because the machines are
not in working order; after all not everybody goes to the station with the
coins needed to buy their tickets.

Incidentally, due to a miscalculation in the boundaries, I also called into
Box Hill.  Here all the machines were working, but of no use to me.  What I
found interesting was the sign on the ticket sellers window: "Machine Out of
Service"

Happy New Year to all on aus.rail....JD
--
John Dennis
Home of the Dutton Bay Tramway
http://www.acslink.net.au/~jdennis/dbt.html

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