myki, yourki, wanki?

by monkey on January 4, 2010
in random

See end of article for Ninja update (pre-posting update)

I have no idea about these silly little cards.

What is the benefit of using these cards to the person traveling on the public transport?

Do they stop the crazy drunk person trying to pick a fight with you, do the remove the graffiti from the trains, do they make the a/c run on the trains, do they make all the trains run on time?

I guess not, they why have they even been introduced at a cost of over $850M (with a further $500M running costs to come)?

In spite of all this, I though I’d try to register for one… here is my tale of woe.

I decided to register, so I went to www.myki.com.au and clicked on the giant button.

myki reg

I then was asked if I wanted a “myki money”, “myki pass” or “no top up” type of pass. This confused me, so I asked for an explanation. By the way, there was no explanation of “no top up” so I assume this is a magic myki that lets you travel for free!

Click here to view that explanation for yourself, if it makes sense to you, please let me know.

I do understand the types of passes to an extent. You can get a money value pass (myki money) from which it deducts your travel costs, but if I opt for the “stored travel pass” (myki pass) option for which you select a pass duration in days anywhere from 28-365 days (akin to a monthly or yearly pass one would assume), how do I know what it’s going to charge me? Ah I hear you say, the charge bust be related to the zones. Quite possibly, but more on that soon.

As I currently travel to and from work daily via the train, I always buy monthly tickets as they are much cheaper.

Using my current example of Full-fare Zone 1+2.

15.9 x Daily Tickets = 3.4 x Weekly Tickets = 1 Monthly Ticket

From that you can see a very clear calculation that buying a monthly ticket is by far the cheapest option if you use the train to travel to and from work everyday. Keep that in mind for this next part of the journey.

I decided to go for a myki pass, as it sounded like a monthly ticket that I currently use.

I had to tell it how may days/weeks I wanted a pass for, so I decided 4 weeks, it was a nice number that fit into my head well.

No comes the confusing bit, I was then asked to “Choose myki pass zone”. I had to select a “Zone from” and a “Zone to” from the following list of options: Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3…. Zone 81. That’s right 81 zones! Flabbergasted I clicked on the link which helpfully asked “Which zone do I need“

You with me so far? Good. So the long, long list was loaded and I started looking for my local train station, which was not there.

In fact the list, if you haven’t already had a look, was all street addresses listed as either Zone 4 or Zone 5. I was rightly confused by now.

It then asked me “Did you know you can also add miki monkey?” to which I responded “No, but I’m guessing it is actually possible due to the box awaiting my numerical value below you Mr. question”.

I opted not to give any money to miki, as I figure they have enough.

Clicking next, I was then asked if I want Full far or Concession fare prices. Full fare unfortunately for me.

I then got asked a number of questions sure as personalisation (name printed on the card), PIN, Account Holder Details, Postal Address and Contact Details.

By this point I was very uneasy about the whole process so far and canceled the whole thing.

The two main sticking points were:

1. Why do we need this new system?

2. So far nothing had explained to me how the whole “myki pass” worked other that that it was a pass stored on my mkyi that was value for a number of days. No mention of cost or if it was cheaper that just using myki money. I would make the assumption that it is, much in the same way a monthly is cheaper that buying dailys everyday, but I was yet to be shown this.

I may not be that old, but I can see where the “change is bad mentality” comes from, although in my case it should probably be “change with no obvious benefit, that is confusing and seemingly a waste of money is pointless”

If anyone out there has had similar, or different experience please let me know.

Ninja-update:

I did find the fares on the main myki website, although doing a quick calculation based on 1 month=30.5 days, the cost for a monthy pass is $176.90 which is more than my current monthly pass cost of $169.

This then leads back to point 1. above, why do we need this new system, especially if it’s going to cost me more? WTF Kosky?

Tags: money, myki, pointless, transport, waste