The state of ticketing in Australia for public transport is terribly embarassing
I disagree, the state of transit ticketing in selected states is embarassing. SYD and MEL are the problem child in this arena, with HBA still behind the 8-ball but starting to catch up.
Hurry up and make one that works across Australia
We may eventually have a "roaming" system where you could use a Brisbane card on the Myki system for example, but there is never going to be any greater co-operation than that.
This won't happen. There are several technical and logistical issues with this, but the primary issue is that the ticketing system of the transit providers is deeply integrated into every aspect of their operations.
Not only do you have a number of different systems, hardly any of them have open information interchange platforms using XML or API's. It also introduces major issues including timely settlement of cross-border transactions, issues of crown legal liability, and not withstanding the system owners who make money from the credit balances held on the cards in daily investment and cash rate markets.
One of the other major problems implimentations face is the design of the ticketing system itself. With PER and BNE/SEQ, their systems are based on zones and don't have complex methods or have transit options that offer extreemly long distances.
MEL is a real problem here as they were intending to use it to handle travel on the V/Line regional network.
In those cities you can use the same card on trains, busses, cable cars, trams, ferries, taxis, convenience stores, the movies, the zoo etc.
(yes I know not all of them do all of it)
Correct, these features are common in the cities mentioned by
Mal and in some others.
The reason why the contactless card programs like Octopus (HK) and EZ-Link (SIN) is because of highly developed technology and innovation sectors, and a public appitite for technologies that will actively streamline day to day aspects of their lives.
Again, they have also worked in large scale because they often are not dealing with several levels of Government and bureauracy across a wide geographic area.
Perth was the first city in Australia to have a smartcard transit system. (SmartRider, circa 2007)
South East Queensland was the second (Go Card, circa 2008)
The closest we have to a card system at all is myki, which is at risk of being cancelled
Perth and Queensland are examples of when projects work. Now this isn't to say that the implimentation in both capitals wasn't without incident - I know that both projects suffered significant setbacks delaying them by as much as 2yrs from intended rollout.
But why is Melbourne's implimentation on the brink of collapse? The simple answer - they are trying to bolt smart ticketing on top of and into an existing system. This has been shown to cause major difficulties.
Melbourne is trying to keep the existing underlying ticketing information, and simply add smart payment on top. However, the original system simply wasn't designed or prepared for such a function, and I contend that if they did proper pre-project investegations this issue would have become apparant before they started out and not letting them get stuck in the muck and mire they're in now.
In Perth, they were already running their transit ticketing platform on Wayfarer technology. Adding smart ticketing was as simple as an upgrade of on-board ticketing units and adding in the readers.
Their major delays arose from their desire for a bullet-proof testing regime which brought about two years of small and wide scale trials, and more importantly being that there were no automatic ticket barriers ever deployed using Wayfarer technology. These barriers needed to be developed, tested, redeveloped, and tested more - all under real world conditions to ensure the final product did the job and could handle the pax volume necessary.
In the case of Brisbane/SEQ, as I understand it they replaced their entire transit ticketing solution rather than attempt to bolt on to the existing infrastructure.
The other advantage for these states is they chose to stick with combination paper/smart ticketing. It did mean that stations with ticketing barriers needed staff to check paper tickets, but it meant faster implimentations.
Agree they need to be better rolled out (eg convenience store payments).
This has been tried in Australia, but without commerical success.
In Newcastle there was the Transcard pilot (can't remember the dates), and in Perth the ERG/HBF e-card system. Both of these systems didn't expeirence wide takeup due to the difficulty of transferring funds onto the cards, and the time taken at retailer level to process the smart transaction.
The only chance of success for these kind of payment solutions in Australia is the wider deployment of Visa Payway/Mastercard Paypass, having the advantage these funds come straight out of your account and don't require the transfer of money to a stored purse.
A system that works with Visa Paywave & Mastercard PayPass would be nice. But I'm dreaming, that'll never happen.
Don't be too surprised if this does start happening, because such systems are already under trial.
NY as you would know has had it's Metrocard system for years. At present there is a major 6mth pilot to test the use of NFC (near field communication) enable credit and debit cards to pay for mass transit fares.
The outcomes of the trial are as yet to be published, but as I read it there was positive reaction from consumers, primarily because NFC payment reduced the number of cards they needed to carry around.
