Lynne Kosky resigns
People, people, people, you may be celebrating the fact that Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky has resigned. But it’s not that simple.
Just as the replacement of Connex with Metro hasn’t miraculously fixed the trains, neither will everything magically be okay with a new minister at the helm.
She was spot-on last week when she said “If I could fix it overnight I would, but it will take time to fix.”
The irony is that under Kosky’s tenure, almost unprecedented investment has been secured for the train network, including the 38 trains which (if it keeps up with patronage) will relieve overcrowding, and the increased maintenance and better infrastructure which will resolve a lot of the reliability problems we see today. But because she’s leaving now, she won’t be around to see it.
PS. Who will the replacement be? Some have assumed Pallas, because he has the other half of transport — Roads and Ports. I don’t think it’s that simple. Should find out tomorrow.
Over the holidays
Over the holidays, I became a bikie:
… discovered the truth about Roger Ramjet:
… and took a ride in a harvester:
Tags: farms, motorbike, Roger Ramjet
4 comments
It’s just not that hard
It’s just not that hard to stub out that cigarette when you get rid of it, rather than chucking it on the ground.
It’s just not that hard to look at the lights outside the lift when it arrives. If the top light is on, it’s going up. If the bottom light is on, it’s going down.
It’s just not that hard to leave a message on the voicemail when you ring, rather than making me guess who it was.
It’s just not that hard to look and see if the dome light on the taxi is lit up before waving frantically at it.
It’s just not that hard to switch off the phone diversion when you move into my old desk, so I don’t get your calls. Especially when I left a PostIt note mentioning I’d done it.
It’s just not that hard to use your indicator.
It’s just not that hard to put your litter in a bin.
It’s just not that hard to stand aside to prevent delaying others if you’re going nowhere.
Tags: etiquette, littering, smoking
19 comments
Being a Myki guinea-pig
So here’s what I’ve found while trying out Myki in the last week or two.
On the day it was announced it was being switched-on for trains, I ordered cards for my kids.
(I should note that I still recommend the general public do not use it, unless they’re looking for trouble. Me? I am looking for trouble. By all means order one while they’re free — though the free offer is expected to be repeated later — but stick it in the drawer until the system works properly.)
The cards arrived a few days later, and had the correct names printed on them, and came with the correct cover letters. Apparently some people still haven’t received their cards, and a lot of people got the wrong cover letters.
Using the cards
We’ve been trying the cards out, and they seemed to work okay.
Most of the Myki vending machines we’ve encountered (apart from day one) have worked for checking balances, and adding money via cards or cash. I like being able to dump all my silver (except five cent coins, and as long as I have a dollar or more) into the machines.
Mind you, about a tenth of stations have no vending machine yet, including some major interchanges like Box Hill, South Yarra, Frankston and Ringwood. It’s because Metcard machines are in the best spots. But given most of them are Premium stations, where staff can sell Metcards, I can’t figure out why they haven’t replaced one of the Metcard machines with a Myki machine at each location.
The scanners for touching-on and off have worked fine. Sometimes they’re very quick, other times still a little slow. Inconsistent. And the beeps are so quiet you can barely hear them.
It does seem to work from within a wallet, as long as you place it flat on the reader, it’s in closest side of the wallet, and there’s only one Myki card in there.
And the city station gates that have been retrofitted with Myki readers? Very inconsistent. Sometimes they work fine. Other times they work but only after an agonising delay. And in two cases they haven’t worked at all, and I’ve gone to find another gate to find to use. (Just to add to the confusion, it appears that not all gates have had Myki readers installed. Some still have their old Metcard X-Press yellow dot readers on them. Down the track all the gates will get replaced with new Myki ones.)
I’ve kept an eye on the charges, of course. So far I haven’t seen any errors. Yesterday I even tested a trip entirely in the zone 1/2 overlap (which should be charged at the cheaper zone 2 rate of $2.02) followed by another into zone 1 (which should switch me from the zone 2 fare to the zone 1 fare of $2.94, eg adding another 92 cents). It worked correctly.
However one of the failings of the scanner design is that while they show you the cost of the fare you’ve been charged, they don’t tell you what the fare is (eg two-hour zone 1), or when the two-hour block expires (so you know how long you can travel before you get charged more).
The web site
But where the system all falls down, apart of course from it not being valid for use on trams and buses (fun and games for those train users advised to catch trams and buses when rail services are suspended), is the supporting web site and the call centre.
The web site has been hopeless, particularly in the first few days when it seemed unable to cope with demand.
And even when it’s working, there are all sorts of niggly things about it, for instance if you request a PDF of transactions, it doesn’t just produce it, but emails it to you later. Sometimes much later.
It’s also replete with bad design. When you enter an address, it validates the suburb name, and if you get it wrong (against the official Australia Post spelling) it rejects it, with no clues as to what it should be. For instance, spell “Glenhuntly” without the space (the same way the station name is spelt, but different to the official spelling) and it’s rejected. Many web sites will show you a dropdown list to choose your suburb based on the postcode. Not this one.
Apparently it will also reject where a space has been typed at the end of a name (fair enough, but the prompts don’t really tell you what went wrong), and characters in names such as apostrophes and hyphens (so if your surname is O’Doherty-Smith, you’ll have to misspell it). Very sloppy.
Some parts of the web site don’t work in some browsers — for instance the Account sections don’t work with Google Chrome and I’m told have problems with some versions of Safari.
And some pages are really kludgey. The transaction list defaults to showing you the first activity that ever happened on your card, rather than the most recent, and also defaults to showing only five things at a time.
The registration problem
But the biggest problem I’ve personally run into is this:
Despite the kids’ cards having been ordered as registered cards, on my account, and the cover-letter stating they were registered, they did not appear on the web site under my account.
After we’d tried them out, I went online to add them to my account, eg register them again — which it let me do, even though the cards already should have been registered.
When I added Jeremy’s card to my account, I goofed. I mis-interpreted the prompts and accidentally got his card registered to me. The web site now thinks I am both the account holder (correct) and the cardholder (incorrect).
I realised my mistake in time to do Isaac’s card the correct way.
The web site includes no way of fixing Jeremy’s card. I’m not even sure of what the legal status of the card is — is it registered to him, as that’s what was requested at the time of ordering, his name is physically written on the card, and he was the first to use it? Or is it registered to me, as the web site (and presumably the Myki database) believes? Note that it’s a child’s concession card. I can’t legally use it.
Last Friday I rang up the Myki call centre to see if it could be rectified. The operator was attentive, but clearly had a different view of all the data to that shown on the public web site. Which meant it took about 15 minutes to explain to him precisely what the problem was. And then he spent another 15 trying to fix it.
In the end he said he couldn’t do it, that he would lodge a service request to get it fixed. Fair enough. (I’ve heard of other people ringing up for similar problems, and the call centre has said they can’t fix it, and will send a new card instead, which just seems ridiculous.)
Several days later, I got an email from them, which I thought would be telling me it was resolved. But it bore no resemblance to the problem that had been flagged — it was a form letter telling me how to get a free Myki. Completely useless, and really irritating, as obviously whoever sent the response has ignored whatever the call centre bloke asked for, and treated both of us like idiots. Not impressed.
And the PDF report of transactions? I’m still waiting for that.
In summary
Mostly working on trains, but some improvements needed, and a LOT of work needed on the web site and support services.
- PTUA: Avoid Myki for now
- PTUA: Myki Q+A (updated)
Tags: Myki, public transport
34 comments
These things aren’t cheap
Here’s an inconvenient truth of ticketing: Installing brand new smartcard systems, even established ones from elsewhere, is perhaps not as cheap as one might think.
Some have said instead of developing Myki, Victoria should have bought an existing system like Hong Kong’s Octopus, or London’s Oyster.
The government (TTA) claim you can’t do this. But Auckland is doing it.
Auckland is buying HK’s Octopus. It’s costing them NZ$47 million in capital costs, and is rumoured to be in the region of NZ $65 million for ten years of running costs, so a total of $112 million for the first ten years (about $90 million Australian dollars).
Sounds cheap doesn’t it!
Then I looked at how big the Auckland public transport system is.
If one assumes that the amount of infrastructure and fleet size (and the amount of ticketing equipment that has to be installed) is closely related to patronage, how does it stack up?
Auckland’s total patronage for the 2008-2009 year: 58.6 million trips.
Melbourne’s total patronage for the year ending September 2009: 494.5 million trips. But Myki covers most of regional Victoria too, so you’d have to add 13.2 million V/Line trips, and an unknown (well, I couldn’t find it via a quick search) number of trips on regional town buses. Let’s say a total of around 510 million trips per year, 8.7 times that of Auckland.
So if Auckland’s adoption of Octopus was to handle 8.7 times as many trips, and perhaps cost 8 times as much, it would come in at $720 million for ten years. Perhaps not quite the bargain one might think.
Though still a lot cheaper than the $1.35 billion Melbourne’s Myki will cost for ten years, in fact it’s a little over half the cost.
And because it’s a mature technology, I’m betting it’ll be a much smoother introduction than Myki’s having.
PS. Some people believe the cost of ticketing and fare collection barely covers revenue. This isn’t true; in Victoria public transport fare revenue is around $600 million per year, and growing. Doesn’t mean it can’t be collected more efficiently though.
PPS. Hold off on your comments on your Myki experiences… I’ll post on that in a couple of days.
Tags: Auckland, Myki
13 comments
The heat in the house
I spent the day working at home yesterday rather than venture out into the world of 43 degree temperatures and train heat troubles, though admittedly I also missed out on comfy air-conditioning at work.
My house doesn’t have air-conditioning. It does have internal blinds in most rooms, the exceptions being the kitchen and the bathroom, which get a little warmer than the rest of the house on days like that.
It’s fine if the internal temperature stays below the mid-20s. Much higher than that, and I’m not going to pretend it’s pleasant, but running a fan (and forgoing a shirt) and drinking plenty icy cold drinks is generally enough to make it bearable.
As Monday wore on, the temperature rose steadily outdoors; more slowly inside. I tried to keep track of it by checking the thermostat temperature every so often, and comparing to the Bureau of Meteorology’s observations for Moorabbin Airport, which is probably the closest weather station.
By 10am it was 30 degrees outside, but 23 inside. Outdoors it peaked at 43.4 around 5pm, but inside the peak was 32 degrees around 7:30pm — as hot as I’ve ever seen it indoors — and it stayed up that high until bed time, by which point outside it had started to drop, though not very far.
This morning as I write this, the BoM says it’s 33 outside. The thermostat says 30 inside, but opening up the house makes it feel like cool air is coming in, since there’s a bit of a breeze.
On my shopping list to help deal with the heat is a ceiling fan for the livingroom (the only main room lacking an antique light fitting), and having seen how external blinds have made a huge difference at M+J’s house and also at my mum’s (and they’re quite cheap, even professionally fitted), I’m considering those too for the NW-facing rooms.
Air-con? I doubt it; for a few hours of a few days a year it doesn’t seem worth it. Evaporative cooling? Maybe.
And I’ll keep the icy cold drinks coming.
How did your place cope?
Tags: air-conditioning, cooling, heat, house
28 comments
Some pics
It’s too damn hot, so here are some photos from last week’s jaunt down to Inverloch.
Uh oh — he lives! Spotted this in Cranbourne:
In Korumburra we found this company who appear to have named their business after Net Speak’s “Be Right Back”… complete with an actual BRB message in the window:
This was one of the signs in Inverloch. Especially amused by the layout of the word “Poo”:
When we got home, we found this in Bentleigh. Next time they update the Google Streetview photos, watch out for me, standing opposite the post office snapping a photo with my phone. Maybe you’ll be able to see my Tintin t-shirt (if they don’t blur him out!)
Tags: Bentleigh, Cranbourne, Doctor Who, Google Streetview, Harold Saxon, Inverloch, Korumburra
6 comments
Which movies are suitable for older kids?
As my kids have grown, the choices of movies has become a little harder. With one 14 and the other 11, most kids’ movies aren’t very appealing, but many adult M-rated movies aren’t suitable either.
MA15+ is a legal restriction — kids under 15 can’t legally see the movie unsupervised, and although they can see them if supervised by a guardian, that rating doesn’t get applied for no reason. It’s almost always quite strong stuff. I don’t go there.
In contrast, M is just a recommendation, and the content can vary widely. I’m of the view that there are movies which are stronger than PG and fall into M without really being too bad.
So how does one determine which are suitable, preferably without watching them first?
One easy way is to check the ratings in other countries. The USA’s MPAA ratings include a PG-13 rating, for which there is no Australian equivalent. There are a number of movies which get PG-13 in the States, but M here, and my view is that generally these are okay for my kids to watch. Examples include all three Lord of the Rings films, Avatar, Star Wars episode 3, and the latest Star Trek movie.
It’s easy to look them up at imdb.com, and it also shows you the ratings in a variety of other countries. For Star Trek for instance it lists all of these:
USA:PG-13 (certificate #44847) | South Korea:12 | UK:12A | Netherlands:12 | Ireland:12A | Finland:K-13 | Singapore:PG | Norway:11 | Switzerland:10 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:10 (canton of Geneva) | Australia:M | Portugal:M/12 | Italy:T | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario) | Brazil:12 | Sweden:11 | Philippines:G (MTRCB) | Hong Kong:IIA | Argentina:Atp | Peru:PT | Iceland:10 | Germany:12 | South Africa:10V | New Zealand:M | Mexico:B | France:U | Canada:PG (Canadian Home Video rating) | Austria:10 | Denmark:12 | Denmark:11
If more detail is required, ScreenIt.com has lots of information for recent movies, though you have to negotiate your way past all the ads to the list of all titles, and some are behind a pay wall.
I suppose everybody has a different strategy for this. That’s mine.
Tags:
11 comments
