Tag: public transport

Touch on, Sod off

I was one of the early adopters of Myki for my public transport ticketing, and it wasn’t the best of experiences. I went back to using Metcard shortly afterwards, and it was only once Myki was fully deployed across trams and buses did I go back to it.

I’ve been using the Myki Money approach, which in theory is cheaper than the Myki Pass approach, but requires the user to “touch on” before travel and “touch off” afterwards. I’ve been using it for over six months now, but recently I’ve suspected that it hasn’t been operating quite as it should.

Although I’m well trained now in “touching off” at the train platform, I find it hard to remember to do it when jumping off a tram. In one instance, leaving a tram to catch a train, my Myki failed to be recognised at the train station turnstiles (no error message – nothing), probably due to the card thinking I’d only recently “touched on” to a tram, so how could I possibly be touching on to a train. How helpful. Not.

Failing to “touch off” on trams has also meant that I’ve been charged extra, as the system assumes I might have traveled into Zone 2, while in fact I’ve remained in Zone 1. This is as-designed, but is highly annoying. Given that I don’t catch trams often enough to reprogram my habit of leaving the tram without touching off, it’s probably sufficient to motivate me to stop using Myki Money.

However, there’s another problem I’m experiencing that’s not meant to happen: sometimes, I’m charged more than the official fare. If I travel more than two trips – more than a train to work and then a train home – it seems I get charged for those extra trips, even though Myki Money is not meant to cost more than a standard daily rate (which is equivalent to two trips). All it takes is to use the tram twice on a normal day to be overcharged by 100%.

Luckily, there’s a free online tool that can help spot these overcharges: Mykileaks. It takes your Myki transaction statement, analyses it, and provides you with clear advice on exactly where you’ve been overcharged. The process is:

  1. Log in to “My Myki” and download a PDF statement of “My transactions”. Set the filter options to include as much as the last six months, then press the “View and Print Statement” button.
  2. Visit Mykileaks, specify the file for the PDF statement, and press the “Submit your statement for analysis” button.
  3. Read the resulting report, and confirm that it makes sense.
  4. Go back to “My Myki” and open the Refund and Reimbursement Form. Fill it in, print and post to Myki.

Ok, so it’s a bit laborious, but it really irks me that they still run this system with overcharging bugs in it. Mykileaks found that I had a case for being overcharged $14.66 over the last five months. According to a Herald Sun article, around 300,000 people used Myki in March, which if my level of overcharges is typical, would equate to $10.5M in unjustified charges over the course of a year.

I’m going to send in my reimbursement claim, and once it’s used up, Myki Money can “sod off”.

Myki mystery

Hong Kong Subway
Image by mikeleeorg via Flickr

I’ve spent a couple of weeks in Hong Kong, and am familiar with the Octopus card. I’ve lived in London, and traveling on the Tube to work every day, clocked up a lot of experience with the Oyster card. So, I was interested to see how Victoria’s own Myki would fare, and I was willing to be an early adopter.

The stories in the press haven’t been pretty. My personal experience was varied, but comes down on the side of bad.

I normally use a Zone 1 weekly ticket, so I decided to simply transition over to a Myki with a weekly ticket on it, rather than risk using the new Myki money system. However, it appears that you can’t escape the latter system, as I found out the hard way.

It started off well. I ordered my new Myki ticket for free (offer extended now to the end of January) and it arrived in the post a few days later, with my name spelled correctly, and the right letter (!) accompanying it.

I went to the train station to put a weekly ticket on it. It was a little unintuitive to load it up, but I’m sure next time it will be quicker.

Arriving at the exit barriers at Parliament station, I encountered my first problem. I wasn’t sure where the Myki had to be put in order to be scanned. As people banked up behind me, and I tried attempt after attempt, eventually I found the right spot. It’s on the side of the barrier (rather than the front or top), on right side of the passenger using it, and at about their knee level. When you scan properly, a message “CSC PASS” appears on the display at the top of the barrier and the gate opens.

Heading home, I knew where to scan, so went through okay. But getting off at my station (in Zone 1) to head home, I was engrossed in my podcasts and I really can’t tell you if I “touched off” at the station or whether the machine didn’t read the card correctly.

The next day, mysteriously, the Myki card didn’t appear to scan correctly when I got on the train, and when I again got to the barriers at Parliament station (confident in my ability to get Myki to scan correctly) they didn’t open. There was no error message, no beep. The Myki card simply wasn’t recognised.

Luckily I was carrying around my receipt for the weekly pass, which I showed the barrier attendants, as there was no other way to indicate to them that the Myki card was valid. They let me through then, and again in the afternoon when I experienced the same problem trying to get home.

Here’s what I learned later: even if you aren’t using the Myki money system, you still need to touch off, as it turns out that Myki will assume that you’ve travelled to the end of the line if you don’t, which means you get charged the difference between a Zone 1 trip and a Zone 2 trip. In my case, this difference was $2.02, so my Myki money balance went from zero to negative $2.02. If you have a negative balance, the card won’t work.

That evening, I rang Myki to complain about my card not working, and spoke to a helpful person called Vinh. After several periods of clarifying what happened, punctuated by long periods on hold, he explained that I’ll be getting a credit for $2.02 to get the card working again. He wasn’t sure if $2.02 was the right amount, because he couldn’t see the negative balance on his system.

Despite the positive news from Vinh, my card continued to be ignored by the barriers for the rest of the week, and the balance stayed at -$2.02. Hopefully next week it will be working, but by this point, I don’t expect it to.

Lessons learned:

  • Always keep the receipt handy for the weekly pass, since this is the only way to prove that I’ve actually got the right to travel on the train.
  • Always remember to touch on and off, even if I’m not using the Myki money system, and even if there isn’t a barrier at the station that forces me to scan the card to get out.
  • Keep using the old system for as long as possible, since the weekly passes cost exactly the same and I don’t need to keep a separate receipt nor remember to touch on and off.
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My pet hate

Packed TrainOr, my current pet hate, I should say, is commuters who don’t sit down.

Let me expain.

Melbourne public transport is currently extraordinarily popular. And when I say popular, I don’t mean people like it, but they do have to use it. The Herald Sun reports that one in five Melburnians are using it to get to work, and there are now 30% more people riding it than three years ago.

When I catch the train in the morning, there are usually something like twenty people crowded near the doors on each carriage, and everyone at my platform has to push to get on. So, when I do manage to actually get on, and I’m crushed nose-to-armpit with the morning mosh-pit, how am I supposed to feel when I see empty seats?

Unbelievably, most mornings there is at least one seat free. However, there is a strange ethic that means people don’t want to sit down. There is some kind of pride in standing. Sitting might deprive some other hypothetical traveller of a seat who is more entitled to it. Sitting down seems to be a greater evil than causing people to be crushed half to death.

Please! People! If there’s a seat near you, then sit in it! I’d rather watch you enjoying a seat than have you contribute to my discomfort.

Maybe this whole rant qualifies me for Grumpy Old Men, but the crowding on public transport is only going to get worse, and we need to change seating etiquette if we are to cope.