Re: Melbourne - Metcard validation before every trip

[cmgord@ecr.mu.oz.au (Christopher_Martin GORDON)]

: 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.

: 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.

Is this true?

I had someone try their Weekly like this:
Validated on Friday to gain entry to Flinders Strees and exited     
at local station (no barriers, no validation)
On Sunday when to local station and walked straight on (passed
validator without validating it.)
At Flinders Street the barriers let him out.

The way I see it is;
If you exit a station throught barriers, you can't exit again at
any station, but this same day time I haven' see yet.

Anyone that uses Monthlies or Weeklies please try thins:
On day don't validate you ticket until you want to exit at
a station with barriers.  I think you will still be able to
get out.

Just remeber that:
To travel you need a valid ticket, A valid ticket is defined as
one with an expiry date printed (or stamped or punched) not
stored in a magnetic strip.
                                     




--
Chris Gordon
..............................................
  email - cmgord@ecr.mu.oz.au
  http://www.ecr.mu.oz.au/~cmgord
..............................................