Frustration as MyWay+ continues to fail to live up to expectations

There are still bugs in the public transport network’s new ticketing system making life difficult for commuters, more than six weeks on from its launch last year.

Public Transport Association of Canberra chair Ryan Hemsley said Transport Canberra was making very incremental progress on getting MyWay+ to the point where it did what was promised.

Mr Hemsley said some key aspects of the system still did not work as intended.

He said the real-time information system could not say when a bus was running early and it could not be accessed by third-party apps.

“We know that 10 per cent of Canberra’s buses run early,” he said.

“It seems to be a small oversight, to say the least, that the so-called world-leading real-time information system can’t tell you if your bus is running early.”

Mr Hemsley said the system could not be accessed via AnyTrip, NextThere, or Google Maps or Apple Maps.

“These are all things that people expected to be functional with MyWay Plus, which have not yet been rolled out, and there is presently no timeframe for when they will be rolled out,” he said.

Mr Hemsley said the QR codes functioned better than they did but the experience remained clunky, still taking much longer to scan than they should.

It was frustrating for commuters who wanted to use their phones so they could draw on funds transferred from their old MyWay accounts, he said.

“The QR code is one of two ways you can access those funds, the other being the travel card,” Mr Hemsley said. “If you don’t want to carry that around, the QR code is the only choice you have.”

He said credit/debit cards and MyWay+ travel cards worked perfectly and the supply of travel cards was now much greater than when the system was launched, but some people might not wish to carry another card.

“It’s a shame that the ticketing option which is displayed so prominently in the [MyWay+] app does not work nearly as efficiently as you would expect,” Mr Hemsley said.

The Journey Planner was “rubbish”, telling you to ride a motorcycle and walk 40 minutes before it will tell you to catch a bus.

“I have no idea how this was deemed to be ready for launch in November, let alone now, where it still recommends almost every other form of transport over public transport,” Mr Hemsley said.

Information from Transport Canberra had dried up, with the helpful updates it was providing at the end of last year stopping.

One improvement has been the sound the validators make when tapping on or off. Mr Hemsley said it now was audible after barely being able to be heard when the system launched.

A Transport Canberra spokesperson said the core functions of the MyWay+ system were fundamentally working and half of all journeys, on average, were tapping on and off with debit and credit cards.

More than 60,000 MyWay+ cards had been activated as of this Monday, including more than 15,000 that were ordered online and the rest from the retail agents.

” As recently as this Monday, 490 cards were sold and NEC has advised they have more than 100,000 more available,” the spokesperson said.

Updates and improvements continued to be applied to the system.

“For instance, an update was applied last week to improve response times to the validators (for tapping on and off) as well as an update to address an issue where QR codes were expiring,” the spokesperson said.

“Transport Canberra is monitoring the performance of these updates to ensure there is ongoing and consistent improvement.”