This post is a little different from my usual blogging, so I hope you’ll bear with me. When you have something you want to say on a topic that has stirred your emotions in some way, then why should you not write it down simply because it might not fit your previous themes?
I think one of the problems citizens have with the new myki system is that it takes away choice. Long gone are the days when you could step onto a bus or tram and purchase just a short term ticket with some cash, or choose instead to go get a yearly pass, or maybe you’d just like to have a metcard for a bit. Now, those choices gone, people are forced to cooperate with and trust myki.
Generally, people don’t like to be backed into corners or told which way is now the best (only) way. They want to find that out for themselves by going through the options and picking the one that suits them best, or what they’re more comfortable with. Especially when the choice can be the difference between them getting to work on time or not. (If your myki card runs out of credit because you haven’t been organised enough, and let’s face it none of us are organised all the time, then you’ll be forced to make a stop to top it up as you can’t do this via the tram itself any more)
Perhaps the debate over whether or not myki is a good system is a little over-emphasized in importance? Well, I don’t think so. Not when it involves people’s money. Reports abound of myki ‘stealing’ money through transfers of credit simply never arriving onto the card, or that the cards take more than they should per tram ride, plus with the funds sometimes taking 3 days to be on the card itself, you’re potentially headed for fare evasions fines that you didn’t even know were coming – fares you could have easily avoided if say, there was a short term ticket option on your form of public transport.
Good bye my lover… Good bye my friend…
Thankfully in towns outside of the main city we still have these guys. I’ll cherish you little buddies, I will.
I’m not exactly old, but even I remember the days when I could get on the bus to school and only pay 80 cents to get from one side of the town to the other. Then myki arrived for our buses and suddenly I found myself with an annoying green card that was constantly out of credit no matter how many times I recharged it with the bus driver. Of course, whenever my card was declined it was easy enough to just whip out a $2 coin and buy myself a short term ticket that the driver who dropped me at university would be kind enough to let me keep using that afternoon to go home despite it being expired. Ah, the good old days… those days all the way back just five years ago…
But five years ago the myki system was supposed to be already up and running perfectly, I shouldn’t be able to reminisce about the better system that was around when this new one should have been kink free and on the go then. Myki was scheduled to be in place for 2007. Hell, I don’t even remember what the heck I was doing in 2007.
What bugs me the most is the cost it took to transfer to the myki system. One and a half billion dollars. Hmm. As a random citizen without that keen political eye I have to say that from down here it seems like you guys could have put that money into something a little better – like say, mental health, hospital equipment, renewable energy resources, helping out the homeless population, helping victims of abuse, or please please please putting it into the heart of all things: education? *cough Victorian TAFEs cough* Because I gotta tell ya, we regular citizens could have and would have ‘dealt with’ the old system quite happily if it meant that the education or health systems were benefiting and we weren’t worrying about a stupid green card. In the article below ‘Oh how myki has fallen-” writer Bruce Guthrie points out that we could have even improved the transport system by buying 40 new trains and still having $800,000 left over. He also pointed out the below quote:
That’s right, we could have gone to Mars for the money we’ve spent on the wretched thing.*
I often have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that regular citizens don’t really get that much of a say in how society is run. Sometimes this is a good thing because if people are uneducated on topics then we’re unlikely to make the best choices, but hell, something like this myki fiasco has just rubbed so many people the wrong way. This was something that we didn’t really need, that isn’t really working out so well and we all realise that the cost for it has been huge – I can’t help but think how many people could have benefited from that sum of cash. It hurts, that.
Plus, you know, the government is totally tracking our transport movements now. I threw that one in for a little dose of paranoia. I’m sorry if you’re actually easily paranoid. They’re not watching you… closely.
Related articles:
- Myki: Disaster from touch on to touch off
- *Oh How the Myki Has Fallen…
- How I learned to Love Myki offers us one benefit – environmentally friendly in that it counters printing all those short term tickets. Good, but good enough reason?
Is anybody out there a myki fan? If so, let me know why, I might reassess my opinion. Maybe. We’ll see.
Sadly, even the USA is turning into a land without a shred of true, autonomous choice. The FDA and DHS are telling citizens that they can’t even plant vegetable gardens in their own backyards; they’re taking away our rights to defend ourselves from criminals and tyrants, and they’ve made any form of dissent into probable cause for becoming a “potentially subversive domestic agitator,’ which entails much grief and trouble when trying to do anything in an official capacity with the government, including getting on a damn domestic flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
And as alluring as the nomadic lifestyle seems, there’s no more free space left on earth. Chances are some investment banker already owns that land, and you’d be prosecuted for trespassing.
Wow, you can’t even plants vegetables?? That’s ridiculous. I’m planning a vegetable garden for the yard after this summer heatwave is done.
The USA seems quite oppressive, or just really hard to get by in sometimes. It’s definitely easier here, even with the crappy transport systems.
You’re right, all the land is owned by someone…. and used for something worse than what it could be. The house with the solar panels and veggie patch seems easier, rates and all.
The whole thing just reminds me of Locke’s Proviso; “Leave as much and as good for others.” Profits become morally unfavorable once companies take more than what they need, or can sell, and hoard the resource simply to control prices (or other matrices) on the supply that they hold.
Sorry for the paraphrase of Locke. I can look up the exact chapter and paragraph if you like. But I totally applaud you on the sustainable living idea. Regulations here are so god damned tight that we can’t get off the grid even if we want to. Land of the free my ass. More like land of the lazy, and home of the intellectually depraved.
Where, may I ask, do you live?
Yours in Contemplation,
Kierkegaard
I hate the idea of hoarding to control prices! It drives me crazy, buuut then a lot of things do. I haven’t read any words by Locke, so thanks for the paraphrase. I probably should read some philosophy one day, I always meant to but never got around to diving in to it all.
I’m in Australia
We also have lazy and intellectually depraved people – and I’m totally one of them :/ So lazy I haven’t even read that philosophy I always meant to.
Start off small; read some of my introductions into philosophy. It’s easily accessible to the novice reader and lays out the salient points and objections. I cover a lot of issues that you just might find absolutely enthralling. Usually you can tell by the title if it’s a lonely, drunken soliloquy about my darling Samantha (who now hates me), or if it’s real philosophical work. I can give you plenty of recommendations as well, although works are cited in each piece.
I’m sorry this is happening. Can see how it would be so maddening. Some things should never change, if it works… Don’t fix it.
Here we go…
Myki is a complete balls up. I wrote a couple of posts about how to make it the most of it. You know, keep it positive and all, but admittedly it was hard.
The most ridiculous thing is the lack of short term tickets. Bloody stupid idea, that is. Big Ted B took the advice of a stupid report that said it would be too expensive to implement. BS – money well spent.
Did you see the facebook meme that compared the cost of Myki to the cost of the latest Mars rover? Caption was “Where’s my spaceship?” PMSL!
As for topping up, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot barge pole. Wouldn’t use auto-top-up if you paid me twice the money back. I don’t use the website to top up because in two different places they say funds may take “up to 24 hours” and “at least 24 hours” to be transferred to your Myki. Which is it, FFS?
And the idea was that it would cover all public transport in Victoria, now it’s only inMelbourne’s trains, trams and buses and (correct me if I’m wrong) only the regional centres that were part of the trials, like Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Traralgon (?) and others (?). So if you need to travel to somewhere that doesn’t have Myki you need a different ticket. How the hell is a tourist going to know WTF to buy, let alone get their heads around this stupid system?
They should have bought an off-the-shelf system but no, they had to stubbornly keep our unique fare structure and build their own smartcard system that can keep our zones for trains, trams and buses, instead of being flexible with the fare system (whihc they ended up changing anyway to allow people to not have to touch off for tram trips in Zone 2)
I better stop ranting now because… I just should.
OMG!!! DON’T GET ME STARTED. MIKI is obviously invented and funded by the oil companies to turn people off public transport. I weep for the utter ridiculousness of it. I weep when I see big burly bully inspectors harassing all the passengers but never any attendants that can help.. I embraced MIKI and “learnt” all about it. It is a crock. They must be losing millions because of the people who don’t pay and sometimes because they are just confused. You have to be sooo bloody organised to even half make it work. Heaven forbid you can’t find the rotten thing as you are bolting out the door. I could write a really boring and depressing book on all the occasions I have seen MIKI let people down. Meanwhile I try and make it work because I believe our future as a species is in public transport.
I long for a future where public transport isn’t a gigantic mess. Unfortunately, I don’t think Myki is that future but like you, I guess we have to try to make it work.
I forgot to say in the post that I feel sorry for tourists who can’t get any sort of travelers pass for the trams, trains and buses now because of myki, (they have to just buy a myki and put money on it) so we can add that to all the people we’ve seen let down by it.
Inspectors scare the bejesus out of me sometimes! What a job. I never thought about the oil companies, but hell, you can’t turn people off public transport when they have nothing to turn to instead!
Very true but you can turn those off who have a choice and there are a lot of cars on the road driven by people who find the system intimidating and confusing and annoying. I have a choice and choose public transport but my friends usually don’t because they hate or don’t understand MIKI. Talking about it just enrages them.
I don’t really believe the oil companies are purposefully trying to stop people using public transport but it wouldn’t surprise me either.
I didn’t realise that Myki had infected all parts of Aus? I remember when I first got back from Korea and saw this Myki business stamped everywhere. Now, as of the 29th of Dec, it’s all we got (I’m assuming it was same for you). And it’s so shit.
Got a friend working for them – in a call centre – who’s told me how absurd their rules actually are. Poor fella; trying to keep dissatisfied customers from flipping their shit.
And yes, I agree, 1984 is upon us. A brave old world. A brave, scary old world.
I think it’s just Victoria with it now as I read that Adelaide and Queensland have perfectly good systems that we supposedly should have mimicked. Then a friend was telling me that when she was up there it was much easier to get around with theirs.
Definitely. I’m also certain that since you can link it to your bank account to pay credit automatically that they also want to know about our bank balances.
Eventually, I’m going to pack my shit and live like a nomad; eat what I hunt, drink from rivers, and sleep in caves.
My goal is to build a home that runs on solar panels, uses tank and recycled water, that has a green house / vegetable garden and a chicken coop.
Of course, then I realised that even if I had a home that didn’t rely completely on the outside world I’d still have to pay rates on the house just for having it. Wut! No such thing as freedom, frankly.
I’ll have to become nomadic like you.