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Morons on the road transport

Sure, I can park here. Why not?

Well, this thing I’m driving is about as big as a bus, so I thought I could park in the bus stop. Obviously it would have been too hard to move forward a couple of metres into the perfectly legal parking spot just ahead.

My car is as big as a bus, so I guess I can park in a bus stop

I guess I could have knocked on the window and asked if she was the 703. But I wanted to catch a real one to see if they’d fixed the zone overlap Myki bug yet.

They haven’t — see today’s Age (not onlinearticle now online). It’s the same problem I first found on day one of Myki on buses back in July, and was highlighted again in a comment from Alasdair — and for him this route is on his daily commute. Can you imagine the hassle of ringing up every day to get re-imbursed the $4.04 (two trips) incorrectly charged?

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

8 replies on “Sure, I can park here. Why not?”

The Age article said that the issue could only be solved when the “myki machines replaced the current Metcards on the buses”. This doesn’t make any sense to me, does it to you?

Slightly badly worded, but my understanding is yes, it’ll finally be fixed when the Metcard equipment is removed and the fully-fledged Myki console is provided for bus drivers. When that happens they’ll be able to enter the route and direction information into the system so it’ll be able to better figure out where the bus is, and what zone it’s in.

Well, did they put their hazard lights on, at least? Everyone knows you can park absolutely anywhere you damn well please if you just put the four way blinkers on!

Great comments in the Age, Daniel.
I’ve been performing the “myki wave & smile-on” when boarding the 703. Once I see that the Metcard equipment is removed, then I’ll try the recommended touch-on method again.
Next problem to fix is – to ensure that the bus waits for the passengers from the train & not drive off just as train passengers approach the bus. The amazing thing is that this scenario is repeated many times daily and right outside Rob Hudson’s office, who is expecting us to vote for him again!

Daniel
in your comment above, you are implying that myki will get the route, direction and zone information from the driver who will key in this information into his/her console. I hope not, as many drivers do not understand the zone overlap (where it starts and finishes). I thought the GPS was going to tell myki this, in which case, why does the driver need to do anything?

@Bonni, nup, no hazard lights.

@Alasdair, yep, another problem to be resolved, definitely.

@Andrew, heh, well the Age probably wouldn’t be interested in a story about a car parking illegally.

@Roger, No, the bus drivers won’t have to enter the zone information. But the Myki GPS will use information about the bus route and direction to help it determine which zone it’s in. In my example, the bus stop in question on route 703 (in Z1+2) is close to another bus stop on route 701 (only in Z2)… as I understand it this means the Myki equipment gets confused and guesses incorrectly that it’s close to the 701 stop in Z2 only.

At the moment I get to ring up pretty much every time I use my myki. Same as always – getting charged for a daily (2xdefault fare) when it should be a 2-hourly, always when making a connection tram/train or tram/tram. Last one was daily fare for 19 minutes of travel – touch on tram, touch on another tram, touch off on second tram. First trip got charged default fare, next tram touch off got charged another one – despite the fact at that point was so far inside the first 2-hour period it isn’t funny. Sigh.
They’re very nice on the myki phone line, and they straight away agree to refund when they see the travel history, but it’s 10 minutes of my time, after most trips. So much for ‘best fare’!!

And it seems stations can also migrate zones – recently touched on at Southern Cross, touched off at Kooyong 15 minutes later… and got charged Z1+2 fare. I didn’t realise we were still in the public beta.

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