Re: New logic on Metcard

["John Wayman" <trecker@bigpond.com>]

I drive buses in Melbourne, and out of say 400 passengers a day, probably at
least 20 tickets don't work as they have been damaged through normal wear
and tear. Many of these are periodical tickets.

Some are Metcard 10 or whatever they are called. Theses are a pain, as when
they are damaged, we have to manually record the expiry date and time.
Theoretically these tickets should be rejected, but someone who has paid a
lot of money for such a ticket is going to be pissed off at buying another
ticket when it is the Metcard ticket system at fault, not them! Passengers
on National Bus Co. buses also usually have their Metcards manually dated!
They can then be used for another day using Metcard validators that can't
read handwriting!

People with these damaged tickets can probably use them for months and
months, because the validators don't read them. Also these tickets won't
work on one bus, but they will on another, giving extra trips to the lucky
ticket holder.

School kids have a number of techniques for obtaining free travel.

I pick up several groups that travel for free on the trams and trains , then
just buy a short trip  to get to school.

As someone who works with the system, I view it as a farce. There are still
stupid flaws in the software, and I am continually annoyed at some of these.

When will Melbourne get a proper ticketing system that is attractive to
customers?

Cheers
John Wayman

Christopher_Martin GORDON wrote in message
<7cb6g2$emd$1@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>...
>
>: It does when people are claiming to have constant troubles, and I did not
>: experience a single problem in an entire fortnight. The only reason I
stated
>: my travel pattern was so that I could not be accused of being a tourist
and
>: only using it a few times a day. What I did was typical of a Melbourne
>: resident (apart from using it when I wanted to go out :p)
>
>Let me know next time you are in Melbourne I will take you and show you
>a few things about automatic ticketing that will change your mind.
>You might not have had problems (try a monthly) but just watch a busy
>station for 1/2 an hour and watch how many problems people have.
>
>: That gets back to my point about the plastic coated tickets. They would
last
>: (they last for a year in Sydney) yet judging by your comments, you (and
>: others) would still not validate. Maybe if you all did, and the Gestapo
were
>: unable to read the details, and this was to become the norm, then they
just
>: might introduce these tickets until Metcard Xpress comes in.
>
>Well it doesn't take much to work out that Metcards are thermal printed and
>this is done with heat, a plastic coated ticket will melt, and then you
>will have no writing on it.
>
>I validate when I have to, ie each morning to get onto the station (so I
>can get out at the other end) through the barriers, going home through
>the barriers, at Ringwood through the barriers (sometimes, through the
>opened barriers because someone has pushed the button to open them, and
>they don't take tickets till reset by a quarter turn of the button)
>never on the bus (National Bus) and not on trams (hardly catch them)
>
>You get pissed off when you get to a station the barriers are open and off
>because someone has pushed the button to get out because they don't have a
>ticket, you can't validate yours, and then next time you see an open
barrier
>you just walk through.  Why bother validating? it didn't work last time.
>
>
>--
>Chris Gordon
>http://www.ecr.mu.oz.au/~cmgord