Re: Melbourne's Automated Ticketing

[Michael Walker <walker@hotkey.net.au>]

> Definitely.
> Who, after all, is going to go to the trouble of finding a retail outlet to buy
> a daily when you only save 10 cents over the price of two 2-hour tickets?
> 
> As I remember from using them a couple of years ago, many of the St Kilda Road
> afternoon southbound services get so crowded around Commercial Road that you can
> barely move - let alone get to an ATM midway down the tram (though any door
> boarding should help this.)
> 

I worked in the South Melbourne area for many years in Sturt St and
Dorcas St after that. Havng occasionally walked up to St Kilda Road to
catch a tram to the city, the north bound ones get fairly full between
4.30pm and 6pm too. Even south bound during the morning peak you can
hardly get much further in from the door and only the really
enthusiastic conductors would bother trying to slowly squeeze past to
check tickets. Let alone an enthusiastic RPO to check if the last person
who squeezed in the door had managed to crawl his/her way to a validator
and back... The only way St Kilda Road trams are going to effectively be
used with the expected passenger procedure of Buy, Validate, Travel so
people can actually reach validators and ATMs is if more trams run in St
Kilda Road during the peak (around 50%) and like THATS going to happen!