To touch off, or not to touch off

[ian]

I'm going to slightly widen 'in the news' to include interesting posts about myki on other web sites.

This one done today by Richard Thornton is good - http://www.richardthornton.com/personal ... -touch-off

He has also done two other myki articles, the first at http://www.richardthornton.com/personal ... -with-myki

and the second at http://www.richardthornton.com/personal ... -with-myki

I think this sums it up well -

One week ago I posted an article about Myki. It wasn't glowing, but it certainly wasn't a thorough kick in the derriere. Now, seven days later and with a more extensive run at using the card, along with its peripheral services, I have to honestly admit that Myki is misguided, mismanaged and a third-rate attempt at fixing something that ain't broke. The faith I so gallantly held on to last week has all but been extinguished.

[Accountability]

It was an interesting article but it was factually incorrect.

My first question is 'why is he using his myki on trams?'

As far as I know (and yes, I may have missed something), the government and the myki spokeswoman have both said that we cannot yet use myki on Melbourne's buses or trams due to numerous problems including lengthy touch-on or touch-off times using the fare payment devices (validators).

Secondly, Route 70 is not one of the three tram routes that extends into Zone 2: if he has a Zone 1 myki pass or is using myki money and touched on in Zone 1, I cannot see how he would be charged a penalty fare as these are only charged if there's a failure of a passenger to touch off in (for instance) Zone 1 on the three tram routes (75 Vermont South, 86 Bundoora and 109 Box Hill) that extend into Zone 2.

[richardt]

Accountability, thanks for your comments, though your suggestion that my comments were factually incorrect surprised me.

I have been going to lengths to ensure information I have been providing can be justified and verified by information publicly available from the Myki website.

In terms of the default fare, I have ammended the introduction of my article to reflect that I was unaware of the zones my tram travels through. While I agree this is an easy thing to determine, the fact remains that I have never needed to know this. I catch the tram from Richmond to the city and back again. I know the tram continues to Wattle Park but I have never once caught it out there. I would imagine many people board trams for short trips without once considering what route the tram is on, let alone its destination, especially around the city.

Which was the point of my article; if for whatever reason you cannot touch off, the difficult decision remains whether you risk the penalty fare or wait for the card readers to reset.

In terms of using Myki on trams in the first place, I am also carrying a 10x2 hourly Zone 1 ticket that I am validating along with my Myki. Yes, this means I am being double charged for each tram trip, but my goal is to document experiences using the system. Granted, many issues will be ironed out, but the usability issues are real. Plus I haven't yet found any reference to fines on the Myki site or the official manual.

So many thanks for your feedback. It has certainly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and helps me to provide more useful information.

[Accountability]

RichardT, I wasn't meaning to cause offence by suggesting that your article was 'factually incorrect.''

However (and I am happy to be corrected if Im am wrong) you should not be charged a penalty fare if you travel on a Route 70 tram in either direction, as it starts and ends its trip within Zone 1.

Mind you, if you travelled from the city to Richmond on a Route 75 tram that is bound for Vermont South, you will be charged a penalty fare if you hop off in Richmond and have myki money - because Vermiont South is in Zone 2.

So yes, in one sense your caution is well placed because there are sections of track (such as Bourke St, city) where a tram going to Zone 2 (e.g Route 86 Bundoora) shares the same street with trams going to a terminus in Zone 1 (e.g. Route 96 East Brunswick.)

[ian]

what I'm going to be interested to see is how well buses/trams know what zone they are in! ie if one side of a cross street is in zone one, and the stop on the other side - it might be 20m along - is in zone two, is it going to get it right no matter which stop I get off or which direction I'm going in??

[richardt]

Accountability, no offence taken. I just wanted to clarify my points.

But you are absolutely correct regarding the default fare, and once again I have been trumped by the confusion... Having slept on it and reread the Myki Q&A I now see that the default fare for a service running in only one zone, be it either Zone 1 or Zone 2 will be the 2-hour fare for that zone, which in effect is the same as touching-off correctly.

Ian, your point is an interesting one, and one that will make my head implode on a Saturday morning with any thought put into it.

[ian]

The one I'm going to be most interested in is the 'city saver' interface. According to their map it finishes at Punt rd - but 25m over Punt rd is Richmond station which is where a lot of people now get off, or Lennox st which is a futher 50m down Swan st. Will the fare vary depending on which side of punt rd people get off?

Also, going into town the punt rd tram stop is on the east side of punt rd - is that in the city save area or not? Will the tram know? How does it know?

[theferaleye]

if one side of a cross street is in zone one, and the stop on the other side - it might be 20m along - is in zone two, is it going to get it right no matter which stop I get off or which direction I'm going in??

I think Donald Rumsfeld dealt with this thorny issue some time ago.

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

[VoiceOfReason]

The one I'm going to be most interested in is the 'city saver' interface. According to their map it finishes at Punt rd - but 25m over Punt rd is Richmond station which is where a lot of people now get off, or Lennox st which is a futher 50m down Swan st. Will the fare vary depending on which side of punt rd people get off?

Also, going into town the punt rd tram stop is on the east side of punt rd - is that in the city save area or not? Will the tram know? How does it know?

From what I hear the system is doing a very good job of charging the correct zone in these instances. Metcard didn't handle it very well. At the moment the system on trams is running on "headless mode" so if the system isn't following the GPS very well the driver has no way of manually changing the zone. This will be changed when Metcard is gone.

I haven't tried it out first hand so I can't speak from experience, but I know that a lot of effort was put into this side of things. We shall see when it launches...

[Accountability]

You are referring to 'zone overlaps.'

There is a great long list of them on the http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au site where it has the myki fares and conditions manual online.

It has mystified me that the OneLink programmers were able to deal with these 'zone overlaps' quite well - there don't seem to be any recently reported problems about passengers being charged an extra zone when they ought not be - but it appears that this issue is creating problems for the myki software.

Of course we will know more if and when myki comes to Melbourne's trams and buses because the more eagle-eyed travellers (by no means every public transport user) will realise if they are being charged for an extra zone and presumably complain about it to either myki's call centre, the media or politicians.