Who said: "The system is here to stay, so you had better get used to it."?
A. Hitler in Poland in 1939.
B. The Russians in Hungary in 1956.
C. The Steamrail headboard painter in 1984.
D. A Metcard official in 1997.
E. All of the above.
Apart from the mechanical failures (presumably fixable), the system suffers
from the concept.
Validation is necessary on any system which runs off-vehicle ticket
purchase, but validation should occur only once. In insisting that a
ticket be poked into a slot for every journey, the term validation has been
misused, and is even misleading. A rather sensible late 1970s Melbourne
report made the point that any ticketing scheme must help make journeys
faster. Forcing passengers into a queue to validate makes journeys slower
and less convenient.
Regards
Roderick Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor