We've all been there: a peak hour tram pulls up at a crowded CBD stop and everybody heads for the doors, only to be held up by that annoying traveller who insists on touching off before they alight – as the crowd of people trying to get on becomes a suddenly angry mob.
And that moment between the Myki touching the reader and the thing beeping and flashing its message – already long when you're boarding a tram – seems to double during the touch off. What, is the data sent by carrier pigeon between the tram and Myki Central?
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On-the-spot Myki fines to be scrapped
"The current system is not a fair one," said Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan as she announced sweeping changes to Victoria's fare enforcement regime in May this year.
Maybe this toucher-off is down from Brisbane – where travellers using the Go card for bus and ferry travel have to touch on and touch off. Or from Sydney, where the Opal card works the same way. That's OK – the far north, the slower pace of life in the subtropics, we get it.
Maybe the person is a local, and it's the first time they've been on a tram after a lifetime of catching Melbourne buses (and it would be a lifetime the way the buses run in this city).
The touch-on touch-off things works on buses – people board at the front and alight through the middle; a bus can do these two things at once, a bit like walking and chewing gum. A tram can't handle it (unless we all suddenly decide to only board at the front).
Is it that hard to understand how to use a Myki? Touch on when you enter a train station, touch off when you leave; touch on when you board a bus, touch off when you alight; touch on when you board a tram, don't bother when you alight – unless you want to pay the lowest fare (which you will anyway) or your travel is all in zone 2 (do trams even run into zone 2?) – then you need to touch off.
And if you're on a really long country commuter train journey – more than two hours or across more than three zones – you need to exit the station at the interchange, touch off at the barriers, and touch back on again!
Easy? Like hell. It's bloody confusing, another example of the mess that is Myki.
OK, Melbourne does things differently. But we got rid of six o'clock closing, we abandoned left-turn-gives-way-to-everyone, and traffic lights no longer turn orange before they turn green.
But we still have a transport ticket system that works like no other in the world.
And to police it we have an army of goons who specialise in wrestling confused Myki users to the ground in choke holds.
Why doesn't PTV just employ roving conductors to "encourage" people to use their Myki properly and sell them a ticket when they haven't got one? Why don't we have a ticketing system that is fast, efficient and easy to understand? Why, PTV, why?
Matt Holden is a Fairfax Media columnist.
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