Re: Melbourne - Metcard validation before every trip

["Johann Fan" <yags@SPAMSUX.geocities.com>]

Glenn Capuano wrote in message <35a4b819.2424098@news.netspace.net.au>...
>The PTC have now set up the Metcard barrier gates (when leaving the
>station) to reject any tickets which haven't been validated on the
>same day. This includes weeklies and monthlies which are perfectly
>valid, but they won't let you through the gates any more if they
>haven't been previously validated that day. At Flagstaff station on
>Tuesday morning they had "revenue protection officers" lecturing all
>the weeklies and monthlies like me who only validate their ticket once
>a month, and herding us through the "All other tickets" gate.


It was bound to happen. How many people would u estimate validates everyday
(with weeklies/monthlies) ?? I think probably close to 20%, maybe less....
therefore it is just them wising up (as stated below) to something that
should of been done when the first implemented the system to make more
people validate their tickets everyday...

>As far as I can see (from some experimentation at an unmanned gate at
>Museum), the machines are now set up so that when going out of a
>station they effectively act as "devalidators", checking if the ticket
>has been validated that day, and if so, removing that validation, as
>if the ticket has never been validated at all (the machine says "Not
>Valid" when it rejects any ticket not validated either that day or
>since the last devalidation, which is completely untrue in the case of
>monthlies.

>
>I'd be interested to know if the machines have always been set up this
>way and the PTC have just activated the function, or if it's something
>they rushed in at the last minute when they realised that there was no
>trip stats coming out of the system. It's interesting that it came
>less than a week after the City Weekly's article stating that it was
>perfectly legal not to validate every trip. I did hear one of the RPOs
>on Tuesday morning saying that he'd only been told about it that
>morning.


It used to be any valid ticket would open the barriers.

>This is a monumental pain. Yet another burden in an already user
>unfriendly system. I wonder how long the cards will hold out with all
>this validation. Anyone know if/when Metcard Xpress is going to
>arrive?


Well, from experience, the monthly tickets will stuff up the last day its
valid and it will be so faded that even the RPO's won't be able to read it,
causing them to either criticise you for not keeping your ticket readable...

cheers
Johann