Toombul Interchange has the new UI.
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I’m genuinely suspecting that the new “translink card” has been dropped in silence and as a consequence, the current old ticket machines are getting this lazy reskin.
Same with regional services being told to figure it out by themselves.
Part of the silent hidden cuts the Crisafulli government is implementing. If you looked across government you would see many many things like this.
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Could someone ask the government about it? And try to get some buzz on it?
If they deflect at least we’ll know why…
Our journalistic outlets barely do any questions about what’s going on so I’m not holding out hope for them to check on TMR at this stage.
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Could we ask/give a tip to the ABC about the UI changes…?
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Says a lot about the Smart Ticketing project when regional operators are seemingly going at it themselves:
https://www.busnews.com.au/contactless-ticketing-to-be-rolled-out-across-townsville-buses/
Seems like Kinetic have already done Cairns and Magnetic Island with Townsville by early November and Mackay, Rockhampton and Bundaberg to follow this year.
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It’s crazy to me that you can go to Townsville or Cairns (or as it turns out, Bundaberg now) and get on literally identical buses to those operated in SEQ, operated by the same company as part of the same ‘unified’ statewide public transport network, but be forced to use a completely different payment system (or cash? is that still a thing) simply because… that’s how it works in QLD.
Smart Ticketing was a great opportunity to finally have a whole of state system that incorporated fare/patronage data collection and live tracking and instead we’re left with this mess.
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The article does say this, so some TMR involvement perhaps? They might at least know it is happening…
From this week, new ticket machines will start being installed across Kinetic’s 57-strong Townsville urban fleet in a move funded by the Queensland government to deliver modern, affordable public transport across regional Queensland.
I wonder out of pure interest if they’ll be the next gen go card reader getting ready for a trial or something
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Fair point but whenever it is isn’t Smart Ticketing, I just went back onto the Translink project page and it does now say project “Region: South East Queensland”
And if we go back a few years then regional things were clearly Smart Ticketing: https://www.facebook.com/reel/2535849476691057/
I found the official Kinetic page and there’s no mention of Translink either (outside of journey planner), so maybe it is an independent project with a state government grant? Faster, easier way to pay | Kinetic
Doesn’t continuing to use Go Cards require DTMR to retain the old, deprecated Go Card system back end, at considerable expense to the department?
Yes, but if you’re starving TMR and everywhere else of resources by having a hiring freeze that means teams are shrinking over time you don’t have the resources to manage the projects such as the new card rollout.
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Groups can also travel on a single card, with a multi-traveller option on the reader letting one passenger select the number of additional adult and concession travellers tapping on to pay for the whole group, then tapping off again when they disembark – a feature that has proved popular with families and visitors on Magnetic Island and in Cairns.
That this is not an option in SEQ currently is a serious disappointment, when I was in Auckland, while I didn’t use it myself as a solo traveller you could apparently do this with their AT “HOP” cards to pay for other people’s fares which I think makes a lot of sense. When my parents visited me in Brisbane and I took them to see UQ, it was before contactless payment was available and after cash was abolished, so then the only way to do this without buying them extra go cards that were never going to use again was to buy a multi passenger paper ticket from the ticket machines on the Bus stations, which worked because they were staying in Southbank and could walk to the station but if they weren’t they wouldn’t have had another option I guess. I don’t see why it would be difficult to implement this for go cards at least so the driver can debit multiple passengers at a time.
Leading on from my previous post, I think that translink should consider making some kind of functionality for bus drivers/ticketing machines to issue group tickets and debit a go card/contact less payment for the value of the group ticket, In Sydney the single use tickets are even contactless enabled so they can open faregates. since the smart ticketing readers are already in place they would only have to add this functionality it would just need new ticketing machines.
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