Split thread from Re: Go Card Feedback - tell us of your Go Card experiences!!

[bcasey]

And why did Arnz say that you were saying that Go Card prices were HIGHER than paper ticket prices, that's why I posted those links.

Paper tickets went up 40%. Go Card was temporarily set at 20% less ("discount") than paper tickets. Shortly after, prices went up about 15% for both and then increased again later. To me that's a 40% or more increase in prices from original paper ticket prices in a very short time. I think it's fair to attribute that increase to the introduction of the Go Card. Had there been no Go Card, ticket prices would not have increased 40% or more in five years.

Currently a paper ticket for one zone costs about $4.50. Just for getting on a train and traveling one stop. Daylight robbery. You can hardly say Go Card is cost competitive if they are resorting to these Mickey Mouse shenanigans to make us like it. It's simply more economical and/or convenient for many people to buy single paper tickets in stead of using a Go Card at least occasionally. They should have that option.

The recent rises in price over the last couple of years are not because of go-card, they are due to the increasing inefficency in the bus network. The Translink Review would have made strides in fixing that, and until it or a similar high-frequency, connection-based network is implemented, the fares will keep going up and up.

[HappyTrainGuy]

And why did Arnz say that you were saying that Go Card prices were HIGHER than paper ticket prices, that's why I posted those links.

Paper tickets went up 40%. Go Card was temporarily set at 20% less ("discount") than paper tickets. Shortly after, prices went up about 15% for both and then increased again later. To me that's a 40% or more increase in prices from original paper ticket prices in a very short time. I think it's fair to attribute that increase to the introduction of the Go Card. Had there been no Go Card, ticket prices would not have increased 40% or more in five years.

Currently a paper ticket for one zone costs about $4.50. Just for getting on a train and traveling one stop. Daylight robbery. You can hardly say Go Card is cost competitive if they are resorting to these Mickey Mouse shenanigans to make us like it. It's simply more economical and/or convenient for many people to buy single paper tickets in stead of using a Go Card at least occasionally. They should have that option.

I'll answer this with a quote from me earlier in the thread.

The GoCard system isn't expensive. Its the network design (BT being the only operator not willing to improve its network and reduce costs - as a result of BCC) and fare leakage from political promises making the system expensive.

As bcasey said. There is just a bucket load of inefficiency in the bus network. A few members here and myself have highlighted some of these inefficiencies. We even make jokes about bus conga lines. We're going to the Ci-ty! We're going to Indooroopil-ly! We're going to the Val-ley!











And the cherry on the cake

[SurfRail]

That's not what QR staff say to me. They hate it.

That's not what they tell me.  Perhaps Gold Coast line staff are different.

I certainly haven't heard widespread dissatisfaction amongst the commuters and Surfside bus drivers I speak to regularly.

Yeah, issues.

Which are now non-issues.

If they don't like it, it's for a reason.

Everything is for a reason, not necessarily a good one.

Hadn't heard of them but they seem well adjusted. Ah, but you are on a rail advocate board, so your objectivity on this issue is not above question.

Go card is an intermodal ticket, and most of us catch buses and trains regularly.  I will leave it to ozbob to go into greater detail since it is his board, but the presence of the word "rail" in the name does not make us all train foamers.  The point is that the rail system should be the backbone of a properly integrated intermodal public transport system which has a variety of low-to-medium frequency bus routes hanging off it, with other particular applications (eg CityCats, Gold Coast Light Rail, regional bus and train services) where relevant.  Hence, we have spent much of the last 12 months discussing, cogitating on and giving feedback concerning the bus network redesigns, given that the upcoming rail timetable upgrade (for which we now have a rough date) was on the government's backburner and therefore not as pressing a priority.

We don't sit in an ivory tower pointing to TransLink's numbers as the sole justification for everything.  I've already made one 80km intermodal journey today and one short bus trip in the CBD.  Most of us travel on the PT system daily and know what is happening.  We all have anecdotes about problems and deficiencies in the network.  However, the mere fact of the existence of go card is not something the majority of us consider to be contentious any longer.  This in fact has probably been the longest discussion on the topic for quite a while. 

You will not find anybody here who agrees with the proposition that go card is perfect, but by and large we generally support it.  It's clear that you do not, and that is perfectly fine, but keep in mind the following:

1. Do not expect us all to just change our minds to agree with what you consider to be correct.  Most of us have given our positions are fairly decent amount of thought, particularly those who have been following developments on go card since before 2008.  A lot of us have had the opportunity to discuss and work on those issues directly with TransLink or QR, so at times we have a different perspective.  Given we actually talk to people there we tend not to view either organisation as some monolith, which is popular to do elsewhere (but very simplistic).

2. We do not have a monopoly on advocacy for public transport, so nothing is stopping anybody else from contributing – albeit nobody else appears to have our exposure, cachet and media profile.  There are plenty of groups out there who have the view that go card is the devil's spawn.  That's up to them.  Without being too patronising, we prefer to deal with the reality, which is that go card is here and operating and won't be going anywhere, so to the extent there are any issues with it those are things to work on, not a reason to turf the entire set-up.

3. A lot of what we deal with is systemic, larger-picture stuff.  People have their elected representatives and the system of government to talk to about what affects them personally.  We are not MPs worried about re-election.  We aren't afraid to suggest for instance that bus routes should be consolidated in places, or that some stations could potentially be closed, or paper tickets withdrawn from sale completely, in order to make things faster/easier to follow/generally better for a greater number of people who might otherwise not use the public transport system.  Some people think that it isn't very nice that we are prepared to see some of the existing user base less likely to use public transport if a change would mean more people overall will use public transport.  That comes down to a fundamental difference in perception about what public transport is and what it should be about.  We are satisfied our underpinnings are pretty sound and backed up by real world evidence and practice.  Go card is just a small sub-set of that.

[Mobility]

Okay, I'm exhausted from a 700km trip today, after coming back from a camping trip, so I'll be brief, sorry if this has already been spoken about.

Mobility - I am an ex Transport Planner (Network Planner) at TL.

What I saw behind the scenes - route 250 was able to save approximately 5-10mins (depending on the time of day given the traffic and patronage conditions) each journey - significant saving for a route that had to have artificially extra time put in to account for paper ticket sales - I did that timetable, and that was one of the factors I had to put in that timetable (circa 2007/8).

The data was very good, we could see where the touch ons were happening and the touch offs.  Also everytime someone touched on, it recorded the actual arrival time that us Planners could see, so we were getting real world data on not only patronage movements, but also timetable data for every single bus route in SEQ, we could for example how patronage changes day to day, week by week, month by month if you were so inclined, and one could drill down that data to see a specific bus route and see how it performs over many weeks from the Go Card data.  It was critical data.  And that was in the early days of it being used, so who knows just how good that data is nowadays.

So Go Card is good for improving services. However, these improvements come at the cost of 40% higher fares and a payment system which is in many ways more cumbersome than a simple weekly paper ticket.

All to take 5 - 10 minutes off a 60-minute route? That amount of time saved is easily canceled by (e.g.) passenger queries/problems, traffic variations. It's the amount of time which drivers are frequently late at stops.

Do these improvements make up for higher fares, queuing up at gates and filing through slowly one at a time, dealing with reader problems or user errors?

Ultimately, public transport is inherently inconvenient, complicated and problematic. It's the nature of the beast. Sharing a vehicles with everyone else in Brisbane involves huge and unavoidable compromises.

Also, data about service use can't tell you everything about how to improve the services, since you need data from non-users as well, i.e., people who are unable to use services because services in their area are either non-existent or unsuitable. For that, you have to conduct surveys.

And excuse me if I'm being too cynical but just because Translink gets data they can use to improve their services, does not mean they will make sincere and genuine improvements accordingly. Politics, corruption, bureaucracy, favoritism and incompetence must interfere with that to some degree.

Prior to the Go Card, the only realistic way we had was essentially educated guesswork, and this was a mix of feedback from the operators, feedback from the drivers, complaints from the public, and physical counts ie: get on a bus and sit on the bus for an entire day (in fact it was usually two weeks where an actual Planner got on board and spent that time counting the passengers getting on and off at the various stops, all day, everyday).  I once did it for routes 240 and 241 (the original 241) and believe me, it got monotonous after the second day, and I'm a PT nut.  Also, with that time taken up sitting on a bus all day to count passengers, I could've been doing other things at the office, but had to put that off simply to get the data before a decision could be made (eg: cut a route).  Some of that continued after we started receiving the data from Cubic, but not to that level, although I do rarely see that they hire people temporarily to sit for a week or two at a bus station and do manual counts that way, still far more effective and more accurate than the educated guesswork we had to do pre-Go Card.

You are trading time spent on buses counting passengers for a team of roving technicians large enough to maintain a SEQ-wide network of readers, gates and info/top-up machines 24/7 plus a big call-centre fielding complaints and reports.

Your issues simply sound subjective, and to me it seems that the problem is actually yourself, and not the system.  I've used the Go Card since 2008 in the pre trial stage, when I wasn't even able to show the design of the Go Card while I was testing it as it hadn't been cleared by the Minister at the time, through to today, and I've only ever had one die on me.

So I am just imagining that the gates are in my way when I try to leave or enter Central and there are twenty people ahead of me filing through them. The difficulties with swiping on and off and often not being able to tell for sure whether I have done it right are my fault, not the system's. The staff attending the gate/reader couldn't tell me either, so they are just stupid too - the system is fine.

I'm not talking about Go Cards dying, I'm talking about the problems I have even when they are working.

I travel a LOT, going to/from university, out to visit friends, for work (volunteer and otherwise), and 99% of the time I don't notice any major issues - trust me, if I saw a major issue or an issue that needed to be pointed out, I would say it, as I've done in the past when I've come across a bug for example, which as soon as TL knew about it, it was fixed pretty quickly.  The only real issues I had was a few years ago when the on board GPS failed to work properly and it took several months before that was fixed, which it has now and I haven't seen a GPS problem with the DCU since.  I don't drive, so I'm out on public transport nearly everyday.

You have been using it since the design and testing stage, so you were probably told more about how to use it than I was, and most bus and train staff also, judging by the blank looks I often get when I complain or ask for help. The response I usually get is "we don't know how it works, we can't do anything, you have to call Translink".

That is another problem. Translink don't bother training staff to use the system. Staff can't assist passengers on the spot. If a passenger is wrongly fined, QR or the driver cannot reverse it. For some reason, that is handled by somebody sitting in a call centre on the other end of a telephone line instead of the person who was there - driving the bus, watching the gate or attending the office. The "reason" is that Translink is a separate entity to QR or BCC. (Which itself is another inefficiency.) Since Translink have put their machines at QR stations and on BCC buses, for their use, could QR and BCC staff not also be given the job of operating them? Why deal with it later, on the telephone, rather than on the scene at the time it occurs?

This arrangement enables Translink to use the technology to forcibly extract fines. Usually, when you are fined, you are issued a ticket for the fine and told to pay or contest the fine. With Go Card, you are made to pay it on the spot. If you think it was undeserved, you have to spend ten minutes on telephone later in the day with the hope that Translink will magnanimously see fit to refund it. You may not even notice that you have been fined, since not everyone looks at the reader display and for various reasons it is sometimes impossible to see. Very lucrative arrangement.

What I have seen is simply human errors, and humans are fallible, no matter how clear you make a system, there will always be the human factor attached to it, from paper tickets through to the Go Card and whatever ticketing system there is in the future.  Paper tickets for example had people not realizing which zone they were in and inadvertently entering into a zone they hadn't paid for, through to staff accidentally selling the incorrect ticket.  I had to memorize the entire zonal system from zone 1 to 23, to make sure I only went to the zones I had paid for, since the Go Card I haven't thought of it since and don't even think of the zones now, I just touch on, touch off and make sure it isn't some obvious erroneous fare, which in five years has only happened to me a couple of times in all my travel, and has been fixed quite quickly once I've contacted TL.

Go Card is not a clear system, it is often baffling. At best, complicated to learn. It's not always as simple as swipe on and off. It's not at all human-error-proof.

Go Card doesn't entirely eliminate the zone problem. There is still no way to anticipate what you will pay when you get off at any given stop or station unless you have made the same trip before, which is also difficult to memorize.

The benefits far outweigh the negatives, and unfortunately it's human nature to take note of the negatives more often than the positives - I've studied consumer behaviour at university, so I'm aware of this.

Overall from your posts, I can only conclude that you just simply lack trust in the Go Card system than anything else, and hence you tend to have a higher awareness if something goes wrong, although based on your posts (and after 700km worth of travel, I've only glanced through them all), it's mostly human error that is happening, mixed with some misinformation about the Go Card system itself. 

The Go Card system itself though is quite solid, and I've used Myki in Melbourne to at least have some point of comparison, and that system has still got some issues with it, namely the time it takes for the reader to read the card.

Again you say that I am just imagining that the Go Card is difficult and inconvenient to use, as are the other passengers who frequently complain to staff. Could it be the reverse: You are just playing down the problems, because you are a "PT nut" and the Go Card eliminates a major difficulty with paying to use PT, namely zone boundaries?

I think overall, it's just going to be at the point where paper tickets are removed completely, in lieu of more outlets to purchase/top up a Go Card and some of the outstanding issues with the unions over the bus drivers and cash are sorted out, and hopefully that happens sooner rather than later.

It's called progress, and either you keep up with the progress or you stay back and get left behind (and that applies to anything), I know, I'm now in the FTV industry and some massive changes are occurring in that industry that will affect Producers and audiences alike over the coming years.  Rather than fighting against it though, I'm embracing it and running with it, and for that I'm quite excited about the future in my new career path.

Great advances are happening in film and TV, I am sure, but more technology does not equal progress. For it to be progressive, there must be benefits which outweigh the greater expense and complexity of operation and maintenance. The Go Card was promised to be cheaper, faster, more convenient and to cut staff. Overall that is not my experience.

[Mobility]

As bcasey said. There is just a bucket load of inefficiency in the bus network. A few members here and myself have highlighted some of these inefficiencies. We even make jokes about bus conga lines. We're going to the Ci-ty! We're going to Indooroopil-ly! We're going to the Val-ley!

Partly due to inefficiency but mainly this is an inherent problem with PT. When you funnel buses from all the routes spread out over the suburbs clear out to Toombul and Mt Gravatt etc., of course you have buses flooding the streets in the inner suburbs, both in moving lanes and at stops. Even with the present "inadequate" number of services and routes it is a problem, as your images demonstrate.

Not just buses, but also trains. At present "inadequate" levels of service, with only about 5% of the population using them, trains are experiencing congestion on lines at inner-city stops, frequently stopping to wait for platforms to clear.

And the passengers are congesting the services. Buses and trains are packed, station concourses and platforms are crowded, footpaths are crowded with people waiting at stops as well as with pedestrians using them.

What can be done?

[ozbob]

Would you like to outline your preferred fare system please mobility?

Mine is here --> http://railbotforum.org/mbs/index.php?topic=8719.0

[HappyTrainGuy]

So Go Card is good for improving services. However, these improvements come at the cost of 40% higher fares and a payment system which is in many ways more cumbersome than a simple weekly paper ticket.

No. The poor bus network design and underutilisation of nearby railway lines is what has jacked up the cost of the ticketing system across SEQ. Prior to GoCard the operators set their own price. Each operator then had their own advantages to their ticketing system. When Translink took over having a fare structure that was the same across all modes and operators came at a disadvantage in that waste would be a serious concern down the line as the pricing was now averaged for everyone from Gympie to the NSW/QLD border rather than being operator and mode specific. With Translink propping up operators with waste that was pushed onto everyone using the network in the form of ticket price increases. Eventually Translink finally properly addressed this by getting all the operators to enter into a network review. All of them said yes but BT at the request of BCC. The majority of BT's network is the exact same as it was when they were at war with the railways. This was a huge drain on providing an efficient and integrated PT network. Since BT went their own way Translink effectively capped their budget and if they wanted to continue with their current mess of a network it was up to them to find the money... and thus Brisbane residents got a rate rise, some routes were deleted such as the P88, some routes lost running hours/frequency and BCC proposing to close down and move depots eg Bowen Hills.

If we still only had paper tickets ticket prices still would have increased. These last few years since the northern busway expansion there has been alot of extra waste added to the network. Alot of our photos and observations point out and show how bad the network really is. Why are all these buses going to the city? Why aren't they running to, from and terminating at Railway stations and bus interchanges? Why are some corridors in service overkill while others have none? Why isn't their a proper CNF with feeders linking locals to and between these? The Gympie Road and Valley corridor can very easy be simplified due to interchanging and route running patterns.

All these buses are out of service.

[STB]

Mobility, I was going to give you a nice verbal bashing to your response, but I think you are simply trolling to get an emotional response.

You have been told time and time again from EXPERIENCED users and even a FORMER TL PLANNER of the benefits of the Go Card system!  Sure, it's not going to be all roses all the time, there is no system in the entire world that is all roses - yes even Paper Tickets aren't all roses!

The Go Card is here to stay. TOUGH, GROW UP AND DEAL WITH IT!  You don't like it, get out of Brisbane, go somewhere where you can live in your little utopia bubble and let progress continue.  It's people like you that we'd be still be living in the stone ages if you ran the world.

Only solution to deal with people like you is to remove paper tickets completely and permanently.  Don't like it, leave!

You say that the system is not fool proof human error wise.  Guess what sunshine, no system in the world is human proof.  Humans are fallible, they will make mistakes no matter what.  So much so that you see warnings for nut allergies on bags of nuts, due to the human factors!

Oh by the way, I understand the future of the FTV industry in more depth to you, thanks to years of study at university and my own dealings with the industry including people I've spoken to in the industry.  You won't like this, but just to give you a heads up, the FTV industry is heading towards a dominant online world in terms of how you get your content.  Veterans like Kevin Spacey, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg just to name a few have already predicted it happening and it is already starting to happen with the rise of Netflix, Google (You Tube), Amazon, Hulu, among others, but those are the big ones.  And from a Producer's point of view, it's also far more cost effective, so this is where the industry is going.  Heck, those big guys are already starting to produce their own content, 'House of Cards' was a $100m production and was exclusive to Netflix, and a second series has already been ordered.  Don't like it?  Stick to your little TV, you may even eventually need to invest in a Smart TV that streams content online as the business models for FTA begin to fail in the decades to come.  Oh by the way, it has been predicted that film and television will disappear and simply be replaced by 'content'.  Don't believe me?  Check out the 45min speech by Kevin Spacey at the International Television Festival in Edinburgh where he delivered the keynote speech.  And that is just scratching the surface of what I know.  Those that don't follow with progress, like people like you will get left behind.

[techblitz]

stb if ever there was a going off topic for the day award...you would win it hands down!
Just tell mobility hes trolling and be done with it.
No lectures on the 'no longer good quality' FTV industriy plzktnx 

[STB]

stb if ever there was a going off topic for the day award...you would win it hands down!
Just tell mobility hes trolling and be done with it.
No lectures on the 'no longer good quality' FTV industriy plzktnx 

Woohoo! 

[bcasey]

As bcasey said. There is just a bucket load of inefficiency in the bus network. A few members here and myself have highlighted some of these inefficiencies. We even make jokes about bus conga lines. We're going to the Ci-ty! We're going to Indooroopil-ly! We're going to the Val-ley!

Partly due to inefficiency but mainly this is an inherent problem with PT. When you funnel buses from all the routes spread out over the suburbs clear out to Toombul and Mt Gravatt etc., of course you have buses flooding the streets in the inner suburbs, both in moving lanes and at stops. Even with the present "inadequate" number of services and routes it is a problem, as your images demonstrate.

From this statement here, it is pretty obvious to me that you are basing your assumptions on your experience with the Brisbane Public Transport Network, and not necessarily on experience with other cities that have good public transport networks, and with basic transit theory.

I recommend you educate yourself by checking out this blog, http://www.humantransit.org/

Particularly, I recommend reading these informative pages

http://www.humantransit.org/2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-for-you-and-good-for-your-city.html
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/02/the-power-and-pleasure-of-grids.html
http://www.humantransit.org/2013/03/abundant-access-a-map-of-the-key-transit-choices.html

He also has a book, Human Transit, which is very well written and does not require any prior knowledge of the field at all.

This is kind of getting off-topic, but the cost of fares is very much related to the design of the transit network. This has been discussed on this forum in other threads as well, particularly the SEQ Bus Network Review thread.

[Mobility]

So Go Card is good for improving services. However, these improvements come at the cost of 40% higher fares and a payment system which is in many ways more cumbersome than a simple weekly paper ticket.

No. The poor bus network design and underutilisation of nearby railway lines is what has jacked up the cost of the ticketing system across SEQ. Prior to GoCard the operators set their own price. Each operator then had their own advantages to their ticketing system. When Translink took over having a fare structure that was the same across all modes and operators came at a disadvantage in that waste would be a serious concern down the line as the pricing was now averaged for everyone from Gympie to the NSW/QLD border rather than being operator and mode specific. With Translink propping up operators with waste that was pushed onto everyone using the network in the form of ticket price increases. Eventually Translink finally properly addressed this by getting all the operators to enter into a network review. All of them said yes but BT at the request of BCC. The majority of BT's network is the exact same as it was when they were at war with the railways. This was a huge drain on providing an efficient and integrated PT network. Since BT went their own way Translink effectively capped their budget and if they wanted to continue with their current mess of a network it was up to them to find the money... and thus Brisbane residents got a rate rise, some routes were deleted such as the P88, some routes lost running hours/frequency and BCC proposing to close down and move depots eg Bowen Hills.

The root of this problem is the attempt to make an integrated state-wide system. Centralised planning for a whole state or country, or even just a city, is inherently inefficient. Theoretically it is more efficient but in practice it can't and doesn't work. It only works for ants and bees, not human beings. Central planning is the dream of socialists and big corporations.

If we still only had paper tickets ticket prices still would have increased.

By 40% in one jump? Not likely. That increase was due to the greater cost of the Go Card system and Translink themselves declared this to be the reason at the time. Why is everybody trying to ignore this? Why am I the only one here who remembers? Are you all five years old?

These last few years since the northern busway expansion there has been alot of extra waste added to the network. Alot of our photos and observations point out and show how bad the network really is. Why are all these buses going to the city? Why aren't they running to, from and terminating at Railway stations and bus interchanges? Why are some corridors in service overkill while others have none? Why isn't their a proper CNF with feeders linking locals to and between these? The Gympie Road and Valley corridor can very easy be simplified due to interchanging and route running patterns.

All these buses are out of service.

How does feeding inner city railway lines with buses solve the problem? Whichever mode people use, bus, train, car, bicycle or feet, services are overcrowded close to the city. Buses, rail cars, station platforms, station concourses, bus stops, footpaths - all packed with people at peak times.  Roads packed with cars and/or buses, roadsides/stops packed with buses, busway stations packed with buses, rail lines congested with trains.

Public transport doesn't solve congestion. Road design and pricing easily could, but they are nonexistent. More roads does not equal less congestion.

[ozbob]

Mobility, you have had a fair crack. I am over 5 years old.

Time to ease up thanks.  Terms of service are here --> http://railbotforum.org/mbs/index.php?topic=3.0

You are trolling.  Stop or you will be removed.

[bcasey]

How does feeding inner city railway lines with buses solve the problem? Whichever mode people use, bus, train, car, bicycle or feet, services are overcrowded close to the city. Buses, rail cars, station platforms, station concourses, bus stops, footpaths - all packed with people at peak times.  Roads packed with cars and/or buses, roadsides/stops packed with buses, busway stations packed with buses, rail lines congested with trains.

Public transport doesn't solve congestion. Road design and pricing easily could, but they are nonexistent. More roads does not equal less congestion.

If the buses are mostly empty, because of excessive duplication along inner city routes, then yes, it causes congestion on the roads just as cars do, because they are carrying mainly air. However, if the network is designed well with high-frequency services connected to feeder services (connecting buses with rail where it makes sense to do so), this congestion is lessened by quite a lot. Buses and especially Trains are designed to be far more efficient in carrying a large group of people in the minimum possible of space (within comfort constraints) than cars are, but the network must be designed to make use of this efficiency.

I agree that Public Transport alone, and more roads alone will not reduce congestion. You need a good balance of both, along with road design, signal operations and potentially road pricing if need be. There will always be people where public transport is less convenient than going by car, but you must not neglect public transport because of this, because the more people who use public transport, the better it is for all travellers, including car users.

[Mobility]

Mobility, I was going to give you a nice verbal bashing to your response, but I think you are simply trolling to get an emotional response.

Again with the trolling charge. It's always easier than actually addressing points you don't like. It's usually the resort of people who are too conceited to believe that anybody might legitimately disagree with them and that possible they are just failing to understand the other person's POV. It is a cheap way of dismissing disagreement and debate. If you are getting emotional, it is not at all necessarily because I am deliberately provoking you.

You have been told time and time again from EXPERIENCED users and even a FORMER TL PLANNER of the benefits of the Go Card system!

I am an experienced user. I have relied on PT my whole adult life. I would expect a better reasoned response from a good planner than a mere appeal to your own authority.

Sure, it's not going to be all roses all the time, there is no system in the entire world that is all roses - yes even Paper Tickets aren't all roses!

I don't expect it to be rosy. In fact, I made the point earlier that there are problems with paper ticketing and that they are simply due to the inherent problem with any communal service of how to impose user fees. All I am saying is that Go Card was not a better system than paper tickets and is in many ways worse.

Hence I think your above response is just dodging my criticisms.

The Go Card is here to stay. TOUGH, GROW UP AND DEAL WITH IT!  You don't like it, get out of Brisbane, go somewhere where you can live in your little utopia bubble and let progress continue. 

LOL. So before, the Go Card is way better. Now, it's tough, but I have to accept it just because it's here. Well then why don't all you rail advocates just close this board and stop trying to change the road and rail network to make it better. You should just accept it as it is. Or go set up a utopia and show us all how it works.

It's people like you that we'd be still be living in the stone ages if you ran the world.

This comment carries with it the assumption that Go Card is better, the very thing I am challenging. Begging the question. I am not against technology, just the poor use of it.

I'd expect better logic from a planner. Though maybe not a Translink planner.

Only solution to deal with people like you is to remove paper tickets completely and permanently.  Don't like it, leave!

Yes, that sounds like Translink.

I don't use paper tickets, because effectively they have been removed completely, by artificially making them much higher in price.

You say that the system is not fool proof human error wise.  Guess what sunshine, no system in the world is human proof.  Humans are fallible, they will make mistakes no matter what.  So much so that you see warnings for nut allergies on bags of nuts, due to the human factors!

Yes, no system can completely eliminate human error. However, with a weekly or monthly - or even daily - paper ticket, there is nothing to go wrong after you buy it, except possibly losing or damaging it. With Go Card, it is all too easy on some occasions to forget to swipe or to swipe the reader wrongly.

An example is when entering a station and then finding out it is closed for track work on the line and then forgetting to swipe off at that station before running for the nearest bus stop.

However, part of the problem is the way Translink enforce the fines. I phoned TL to get a $10 fine lifted and since I had already had two lifted that month (one of which was the fault of the gate/reader, the other due to entering a closed station and forgetting to swipe off when reading), they would not lift the third one. This even though I was on "free time" having done nine trips and therefore could not have been fare evading. Why the two-per-month limit? Each case should be decided on it's own circumstances. It is clear most of the time that the person is not fare evading. The fact that the person was fined shows that if he were fare evading, he very stupidly picked the wrong stations to try it.

Oh by the way, I understand the future of the FTV industry in more depth to you, thanks to years of study at university and my own dealings with the industry including people I've spoken to in the industry.  You won't like this, but just to give you a heads up, the FTV industry is heading towards a dominant online world in terms of how you get your content.  Veterans like Kevin Spacey, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg just to name a few have already predicted it happening and it is already starting to happen with the rise of Netflix, Google (You Tube), Amazon, Hulu, among others, but those are the big ones.  And from a Producer's point of view, it's also far more cost effective, so this is where the industry is going.  Heck, those big guys are already starting to produce their own content, 'House of Cards' was a $100m production and was exclusive to Netflix, and a second series has already been ordered.  Don't like it?  Stick to your little TV, you may even eventually need to invest in a Smart TV that streams content online as the business models for FTA begin to fail in the decades to come.  Oh by the way, it has been predicted that film and television will disappear and simply be replaced by 'content'.  Don't believe me?  Check out the 45min speech by Kevin Spacey at the International Television Festival in Edinburgh where he delivered the keynote speech.  And that is just scratching the surface of what I know.  Those that don't follow with progress, like people like you will get left behind.

I did not criticise these advances. They sound like real ones. But it is not authority which decides how beneficial they are, it is the people who pay to use them. Lucas, Spacey and Spielberg know acting and directing. The market decides what is the best form of distribution of their films.

[Mobility]

Mobility, you have had a fair crack. I am over 5 years old.

Time to ease up thanks.  Terms of service are here --> http://railbotforum.org/mbs/index.php?topic=3.0

You are trolling.  Stop or you will be removed.

Which part of those terms have I infringed? Which parts of my posts are trolling? What should I stop doing?

[ozbob]

Bye mobility. Membership terminated.