22 June 2010

Alistair Coe on buses

| johnboy
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The Liberal’s Alistair Coe is making a contribution to public discourse.

His questions on notice have turned up the extent of broken ticketing on the bus service:

“A Question on Notice asked by the Canberra Liberals has revealed over half a million passengers aren’t paying to get on ACTION buses because of errors in the ticketing machines,” Mr Coe said.

“That’s over half a million dollars not collected by ACTION, which places further pressure on revenue, with ACTION already subsided by the ACT taxpayer by more than 80 per cent.

”This is yet another example of inefficiencies within the ACTION bus service. Recently it was revealed ACTION was spending almost $30,000 every weekday on dead running buses.

“The Transport Minister, Jon Stanhope, has again done little to address chronic inefficiencies within ACTION, but has made it more expensive for Canberrans to use their cars.

(Does every missed ticket = $1?)

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#4 Shaneb, It might come as a surprise to you that the ticketing machines have been failing significantly for about 8 years now. I think our Transport Minister has been a little slow to get off his ass and do something about it. The writing was on the wall years ago and it should never have got to the point it’s at now.

Interesting that no one has picked up on the amazing turnover of senior mgmt at Action in the last few years.

I think that we’ve come to have an obsolete ticketing system beyond repair or maintenance is hardly a stirring defence of management.

ghughes said :

Good to see Sonic has his attentive staff (shaneb) spinning on RiotACT.

He’s right though, it’s not like Action have any other option. Although Coe is a joke, so maybe he really didn’t know.

Good to see Sonic has his attentive staff (shaneb) spinning on RiotACT.

“The Transport Minister, Jon Stanhope, has again done little to address chronic inefficiencies within ACTION, but has made it more expensive for Canberrans to use their cars.”

As an MLA Alistair Coe would be well aware that the wheels are already in motion to replace the ticket machines with an RFID based system. Additionally he would be aware that the system currently used on Action buses was discontinued many years ago, and that Action has already purchased all available units from other bus companies who are retiring them.

So, given that he is aware of this, what does he decide to do? Take a cheap shot at the transport minister about it anyway.

As a regular Action passenger I’ve seen the failure of the ticketing machines in er…action. Example: Just last week on my way to the coalface I inserted my faresaver ten into the reader. It does its thing, I sit down and get my personal media device out. Fine, no problems there. Next stop, different person same process except their card jams the reader and gets stuck. Everyone else with their little cards ready gets waved on – no validation recorded. And there were a lot of people as this was the busy morning commute.

At first I was pissed off, I mean… I’d lost (or at least used) a ride on my card while a whole bunch of folk were enjoying one for free. But did that deep breathing thing and remembered I’d also been one of those free riders on (many) other occasions.

My point is: these things do break down a lot. Which can’t be good. Firstly it doesn’t give a true picture of how many people are using the services and secondly that’s a lot of lost revenue.

That said I think Action provides a roughly decent service. Compared to some other cities.

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