Myki newsflash

Fri 18 December 2009 12:32pm by Daniel · Filed under: transport, Twitter

This was my favourite Twitter post of the week, which I’m repeating here while it’s still timely:

NEWSFLASH: Govt to change state to the Assyrian Calendar, giving 3 more months to get #Myki right “by the end of the year”

(W00t — Retweets!)

And yes if you’re wondering, I had done some research before posting it. Perhaps appropriately, the end of the Assyrian calendar year is the “Month of evil spirits”, or ܐܕܪ.

(Your computer will need to be configured to display non-Western alphabets to display that properly.)

There is speculation of an imminent launch for Myki in Melbourne, but there’s been those kinds of rumours flying around for the last month or so.

Meanwhile it appears there are still a lot of evil spirits in the system, with scanners responding slowly or not at all, and on Wednesday for the second time I saw a Myki vending machine doing its weirdo update thing in the middle of the evening rush hour.

Tags: Myki, Twitter
2 comments

Legal precinct stereotypes

Fri 18 December 2009 7:03am by Daniel · Filed under: Melbourne, Urban tribes

In the legal precinct (William Street between Little Bourke and Latrobe Streets, for non-Melburnians), there are three distinct groups of people that strike me as common, but whom you don’t see much of in other areas of the CBD:

1. Young men looking uncomfortable in shirts and ties (and sometimes suits) — eg defendants and witnesses… there are women and older men too of course, but they don’t stick out as much. Most of them seem to smoke (at least, most of those standing on the street), and the tattoo count seems to be above that of the general population.

Sometimes they have an entourage who are similarly dressed-up, and sometimes they have an entourage who are in their usual clothing, which makes the defendant stick out even more. None of this demographic knows where to stand on the Flagstaff station escalators.

2. TV crews hanging about the entrance keeping a lookout for some of those defendants, especially in front of the Magistrate’s Court.

3. People in capes and funny wigs (various legal eagles), who in this neck of the woods, don’t raise an eyebrow.

Tags: legal, people
6 comments

Chickens for phones

Thu 17 December 2009 7:09am by Daniel · Filed under: Geek

Dunno about you, but I’ve got a spare useless mobile phone sitting at home doing nothing. It’s a Nokia 6100 that I got in 2004, then donated to Isaac when I got the 6230i, and he’s just recently upgraded to my less-old 6230i now I’ve got an N95.

The 6100′s buttons are hopeless these days, and it’s time to say goodbye.

Happily, until the end of December, the MobileMuster people will donate a chicken to Oxfam for each old phone recycled, if you print the special Reply Paid label off their web site.

Anybody else got old phones to get rid of?

Tags: chickens, Oxfam, phones
3 comments

Stickers everywhere

Wed 16 December 2009 7:08am by Daniel · Filed under: transport

Someone’s been busy with stickers.

In their contract, Metro had until Monday to rid the train system of any mention of Connex.

The Franchisee will apply stickers to cover all references to Connex, both internally and externally, on all Rolling Stock. These works will be undertaken at the various depots and sidings where the Trains are stabled at night, while the Trains would not otherwise be in use.

In conjunction with the Rolling Stock Debranding, the Franchisee will apply stickers over all references to Connex at all Stations, depots, yards and offices of the Franchisee. The Franchisee will also remove the Connex brand from all light-boxes and existing signage.

Target project completion date: 14 December 2009

– MR3 Train Franchise Agreement, volume 2, pages 294-295

The contract notes it includes 993 train carriages, 10,000 signs at 211 stations, 675 signs at 45 depots and yards, and 60 signs at 6 offices. Pretty big job.

They seem to have come pretty close — the only ones I saw around the place yesterday were some of those big station signs (some of them are probably quite awkward to cover up, particularly when they’d require road closures to get a scissor lift up there to do it), and posters such as timetables (which is odd, because they should be dead easy to do).

Of course, in some spots it looks a little tacky. Particularly amusing was the censoring of posters for Connex for Cancer Day, which raises money for Peter Mac.

The stickers on the outside of the trains don’t look too bad for a rush job. Metro logos on the front, and tag cloud-like train line names above the doors.

Over the coming months they’ll properly replace/modify the signs, and put the trains in their new colour scheme. There’s a handful already in the new colours. They’ve got until November 2010 for that, and the whole lot will cost about $25 million — I’m personally not convinced it looks brilliant.

And what about the Metro name and logo itself?

I like it. It’s a good, strong brand, much moreso than the Connex logo was.

Actually I think it’s better than the Metlink logo, with its round globby @-like thing.

The surveys I did here on my blog in the last couple of days (perhaps skewed by the readership here) showed that about 60% of people correctly identified the Metlink logo, which has been around since 2003. The Metro trains logo got a slightly higher level of recognition at 68%, despite having been around only since September. (Mind you, maybe the rate should have been higher, given the game was given away by the post just below the survey form.)

Metro is a name that is common worldwide and recognisable worldwide, though what we have doesn’t quite live up to the name — we need more frequent train services 7-days-a-week for that… something notable in its absence from the government’s “Creating a metro system” web page.

I’ll be interested to see if they start using the M on its own on signs, as you see with the London Underground roundel, and the new T logo used in Vancouver (potentially confusing I suspect).

And I wonder if businesses that are near stations will start advertising their addresses with a little M logo and the name of the station, as happens in some cities.

Of course, new logos and colour scheme are only superficial. It’s extra service, line extensions, and upgrades to make infrastructure and fleets reliable that will make the real difference.

How things used to look

PS. With a forecast top temperature of 39 degrees today, we may see the first real test of how Metro performs in extreme heat, and perhaps proof that things don’t magically change when you put new logos on everything.

Tags: Connex, Metro
19 comments