If It's That Smart A Card, It Would Make The Trains Run On Time

If It's That Smart A Card, It Would Make The Trains Run On Time

The Age

Monday July 16, 2007

Buy the ticket and take the ride. If only the new ticketing system could guarantee a better transport service.

DURING the past two years, a market research company, The Klein Partnership, has conducted surveys in relation to the introduction of the State Government's new public transport ticketing system. It is called the myki smartcard.

No one should have been surprised at the results, which The Age publishes today after a successful freedom of information request. Not the Transport Ticketing Authority, not the Government, not the people who use public transport regularly, and not The Age. For what the Klein research found was that users were underwhelmed at the prospect of a $500 million upgrade of the state's public transport ticketing system. They were, however, keen to see the State Government improve the system on which they relied to get from A to B and back again. On time. Safely. In comfort. Reliably. As a matter of course. Every day.

The research found that people did not think a new ticketing method was the most obvious and urgent area of improvement. They are right. One must ask how would it make a traveller feel, standing at a suburban station while yet another peak-hour train service is cancelled, to know "well at least I have a new ticket system". The Age can answer that, as could any commuter. Disgusted. The feeling would be hardly alleviated by the knowledge that the Transport Ticketing Authority had spent almost $1 million on the market research.

The new ticketing system is a card, the size of a credit card, that operates in much the same way as the e-tag. Commuters will scan the card against a machine at the start of their journey on bus, tram or train and then scan it again at journey's end. The fare will be deducted from the credit that the commuter has placed on the card. The balance on the card can be topped up via the internet, the telephone or possibly a chain of convenience stores. (Where at the same time you can buy goods with the card.) Metcard, which cost $330 million and was introduced only in 1998, will be terminated over time.

There are many challenges in delivering public transport to the public and, as those surveyed by the Klein Partnership have indicated, ticketing is not the most important. The State Government in the May budget brought forward public transport investments "no doubt in response to public anger at a creaking service" as The Age editorialised. More than $870 million was committed. With Melbourne's population set to increase by a million in two decades it is vital to the health of the city that the Government gets on track in providing a network that can service that growth. The outer suburbs now are already poorly serviced. What sort of timetable is this for the future? It is true that last year the Government outlined a $10.5 billion budget over the next 10 years, but more than half of that was on roads.

The latest figures show that rail patronage on V/Line and Connex is booming. V/Line was enjoying a 50-year high, and state budget papers had shown that the rail network was expected to have handled about 174 million passengers trips last financial year, 10 million more than forecast. More passengers, however, meant more dissatisfaction with the service. Connex has had to pay more than $62 million in fines since it took control of the system in 2004. In the first three months of this year it has had to pay $10 million for late or cancelled trains. V/Line has had to pay $1.2 million and Yarra Trams $900,000 in penalties. There was also the brake failure debacle when 2000 services were cancelled in January.

The myki system is being touted as a revolution. No doubt the "confident regulars", as one group of travellers were categorised by the survey, will have no anxious moments come the revolution some time next year. But surely the most important revolution is keeping the wheels turning reliably, on time and across all of the city and countryside.