AVVMs needed at Major Bus Stations ?

[ozbob]

It would seem to me that AVVMs would be very useful at the major bus stations eg. KGBS, Mater Hill, 'Gabba and so forth.  Go card could be topped up (important for BT commuters), tickets purchased and so forth.

Any comments and suggestions please?

Thanks

Bob

[ozbob]

I caught L376 on a 174 this afternoon at Mater Hill.  It was tedious waiting for people to purchase tickets from the driver.

Surely they can place some AVVMs at the bus stations?  They would need to be a bit different in terms of the setup for the various routes but conductors can manage to sell tickets OK.

[Emmie]

It would make a huge difference to loading times, on the major busway stations, as well as the University of Queensland bus stops.

It's a particular problem at the Cultural Centre, where most passengers are not regular commuters, who know the system, but occasional visitors, often from outside Brisbane, who don't know the system and sometimes can't communicate confidently in English.  I've seen bus drivers trying to deal with them, mostly very politely, but clearly frustrated by the time it takes.  It would be easier to use a machine to buy tickets in a foreign country, where you can read but not speak enough of the language.

Unfortunately the AVVMs are calibrated to the current untidy fare structure, and only refer to railway stations - if we had a sensible zone-based fare structure, like the Oyster Card in London, this wouldn't be a problem.

[haakon]

We do have a sensible zone based fare system. Unfortunately you can't punch in Zone X to Zone Y into an AVVM. If you could it would reduce the number of taps required to purchase a paper ticket.

I suspect they haven't done that as it just might in encourage the buggers (re: the traveling public) to eschew the go card in favour of the incumbent paper ticket. Can have that now can we.......

[ozbob]

From Brisbane mX 5th March 2009 page 5

Happy 2.0 mX!   

Go distance for top-up

Go distance for top-up

Commuter advocacy group Rail Back on Track has criticised TransLink over a lack of Go Card ticket machines at the city's major bus stations.

Spokesman Robert Dow said passengers travelling on buses at stations such as king George Square don't have access to Go Card top-up machines and have to find other retail points.

"It's ironic that if you want to catch a bus you might have to go up to the train station to get your go Card to work," Dow said.

But a TransLink spokesman said King George Square bus commuters can purchase and top up go Cards at the station's Transport Information Centre, with more than 200 retailers also provided.

[WTN]

I recently walked to Buranda train station and used an AVVM to buy a ticket to catch buses on the busway.  Why?  Because I didn't like getting strange looks from bus drivers with strange ticket requests.  If I had to explain a lot to buy a zone 2-4 ticket, what chance do I have with buying a zone 1-3, from zone 2?  Using a machine means less hassle, but really they should be at most busway stations and have from zone x to y, including the zone the machine is in.  I shouldn't really need to know in a roundabout way which station to punch for how many zones.