Comment on Melbourne trains finally arrive in the Myki-less era with tap-and-go payments, almost a decade after Sydney

• Eyekaytee@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  what did sydney and brisbane do?

  according to theto eternal ai machine:

  Good amount of detail here. Here’s the TLDR:

  The core problem: built from scratch by a bad contractor

  Every other Australian city’s system was built on pre-existing technology from suppliers with proven track records — in fact many of those suppliers tendered for Myki — but Victoria ended up with a system built from the ground up.  That single decision explains most of the pain.

  In July 2005, Victoria awarded a $500 million contract to the Keane Australia Micropayment Consortium (KAMCO), with a planned go-live of March 2007. By December 2007 it was already 9 months late and $500 million over budget.  It ultimately cost $1.3 billion.

  The tram problem

  Melbourne’s tram network — the largest in the world — made this uniquely hard. Unlike trains or buses, trams have hundreds of stops with no gates and huge passenger throughput at peak hour. The system required a reader on every tram, train, and bus, and the complex distance/time-based fare calculation meant the readers had to do significant computation on each tap — unlike simpler flat-fare systems elsewhere.  Early trials showed Myki actually slowed trams down at busy stops. Concerns about touch-off delays at tram stops had been raised for some time, with early trials showing it slowed trams down significantly. 

  The rushed launch made it worse

  The rollout was rushed to meet a political promise, and at launch there were faulty top-up machines, an online top-up process that took up to 24 hours, and reader response times of almost 2 seconds — about twice as slow as Sydney’s Opal. 

  Brisbane got lucky by going simple and early

  Brisbane’s Go Card launched in 2008 on buses only, no trams, flat zones, off-the-shelf tech. Much simpler problem space, much cheaper to solve. The assessment is that Brisbane appears to have got away with a bargain by comparison. 

  And it’s still not done

  NSW has had bank card tap-and-go since 2018, and Adelaide since 2020.  Victoria won’t have full contactless payment (bank cards/phones) across the whole network until 2028 — an 18-month delay from the already-revised timeline. 

  So in short: wrong contractor, built from scratch, uniquely complex tram network, rushed for politics, and they’re still cleaning it up 20 years later.

  maybe @notgold@aussie.zone can confirm if accurate

  source

  • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    You can see trams as just a big bus though. London has had this for ages and the rates are pretty simply based on whether you change zone.

    source

    • notgold@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Trams in the CBD are closer to trains though. Can have a hundred of people getting on&off at a stop. Each door has 2 readers; 3-4 doors; a few seconds for each person add up quick. This has largely been eliminated by the free team zone in Melbourne’s CBD.

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  • notgold@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I wasn’t around Kamco/Myki/NTT/PTV/VRT in the early days of ticketing system implementation but I worked with many that were. They pretty much all said everything was rushed and contract meant that every little change was a cost variation. All the subcontractors loved this because they got paid a lot to often stand around doing nothing.

    Think the meme of 10 council workers watching 1 guy do the work. The company A would only do X, company B would only do Y, etc. Internal resistance from management and workforces of Hillside/Connex & VRT also hampered progress.

    My first hand knowledge was an extremely wasteful system where a single broken Myki reader could require technicians from 5+ businesses to come out at a cost to PTV of 10’s of thousands each time. I saw the remnants of the Myki infrastructure installed at every station in the state, they would have scheduled maintenance even though there wasn’t a ticket machine. In some cases the stations were permanently closed. Felt very much like Guido Hatzis plumbing was in charge.

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