As we have mentioned before, Auckland is just at the start of some massive changes to PT. Change naturally causes concern for some people and can obviously be disruptive. That is why it is so important that those initiating the change communicate clearly why it is happening and take every opportunity to say why the change is positive. Sometimes I wonder what AT are really up to as they seemingly miss prime opportunities to do this. Take today’s article in the Herald.
Cleaner walking 40 mins to work with bad knee rather than deal with faulty machine and risk increased fine.
Darrell Preston would rather hobble 5km a day on a bad knee than take his chances with the new train ticketing machines.
That is because Auckland Transport has doubled the penalty fare for passengers without tickets to $20, and he says the machine, at his nearest railway station in Papatoetoe, tends to gobble up coins without offering anything in return.
The 60-year-old cleaner says he sets out at 4.55am each morning on a 40-minute walk to central Manukau, where he catches a bus to his job at the Foundation of the Blind’s Homai Campus workshops.
Ok so he, and likely many others, don’t like using the machines. That is fine, we have to accept that not everyone feels comfortable with them but that isn’t what prompted me to write this post, it is AT’s reply.
A spokeswoman for the council transport organisation, Sharon Hunter, said passengers unable to buy tickets from faulty machines could always ask rail inspectors for special permits to complete their trips without being penalised.
Inspectors were easily able to check with back-office staff on whether a particular machine had failed, and they had issued 1535 “permits to travel” since the new system of pre-boarding ticket sales were introduced in October.
That was also when electronic Hop cards were rolled out on rail, signalling an end to on-board cash sales.
Ms Hunter said 887 penalty tickets had been issued since early January to passengers who failed to make any attempt to pay a fare.
Auckland Transport had increased the penalty as a deterrent while waiting for legislative changes to provide for fines similar those in Australia, where fare dodgers are fined more than $200 if caught.
She was unable to provide failure rates for ticketing machines, which also serve to top up Hop cards, but said more machines were on order.
So more machines are coming and if the machine is faulty then the train staff can allow him to still travel which is good. The problem however is that there seems to be absolutely no mention of the benefits that this customer, or others in his situation, could receive by using a HOP card. Instead this could have been the perfect opportunity to remind people that a HOP card, especially one with automatic top ups loaded, could easily solve many of these problems. The article even mentions that an AT representative met Darrell on the platform, what better time to personally show him the benefits of using the card. Of course there is more benefit than just not having to use the machine as of course using the HOP card provides a discount on travel too yet none of this is mentioned.
Now to be fair it might be that Sharon had put this in the reply and that the Herald didn’t print it but I suspect that didn’t happen. Situations like this are prime opportunities to promote the benefits of the HOP system and AT need to be grabbing them when they arise.
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So instead of paying a $20 fine which I assume gets added to the card isn’t it cheaper to just buy a new card each time it happens?
You are confusing the fine with the default HOP fare. The fine only applies to people who don’t tag on or who don’t buy a ticket. This is deliberate theft and the fine has to be paid in cash.
The default fare on the AT HOP is simply if you forget to tag off and is the value of the maximum distance you could have possibly travelled, not a fine as such but rather a prevention to stop it from being misused.
Yes the benefits of using an AT HOP card are pretty much always mentioned! Here’s the mention which was part of the information to The Herald for last night’s story.
Buy an AT HOP card and top up on line…
Just a thought and maybe it was done. Couldn’t the employee who met with him have turned up with a free AT Hop card with $20 free credit and showed him how to top it up?
Could have been a good news story about how one commuter was now sold on the benefits of the AT Hop card.
Also, any update on when we will start seeing AT Hop on the buses?
The NZ Heraloid (see what I tried and failed somewhat to do there….) – never let the full story get in the way of some “drama”.
Free credit? Sure and then suddenly a cast of muppets will appear like magic in a few days all saying a similar story and wanting their little handout. Yes I am old + cynical.
Although, does raise a point about whether the charge for an AT Hop card should have preloaded credit to that amount to get people in the “mood”.
Being a bit (OK. a lot) pedantic here, you don’t cover 5km in 40 minutes at a walk, you do so at a slow jog. And if you’ve got a dodgy knee then being able to move at any speed for 40 minutes straight is impressive.
Google Maps tells me that to walk from Papatoetoe station to Homai station is 5.9km so perhaps he should walk the extra 900m and give the bus a miss altogether? Admittedly, Google would have him taking 1 hr 13 min over the journey.
And assuming that the 40 minutes is correct (and the 5km is an exaggeration), if he is anything like me it is probably still more time efficient to walk than catch the train as he has a 15 minute wait from setting out at 4.55am until the first train of the morning arrives and if he misses it (this is where he and I would share a tendency) the next one doesn’t turn up for another half an hour.
None of which should put him off getting a HOP card for those odd times when circumstances dictate he should catch the train anyway; again, like me, he probably would find himself short of coins that day.
Being even more pedantic, it doesn’t say he walks 5km each way. It says he walks 5km each day, or a return trip that’s 2.5km each way. On a bung knee that’s consistent with 40 minutes. Walks 2.5km from home to Manukau, catches the bus to Homai. Catches the bus back from Homai to Manukau, walks 2.5km to home.
Well spotted – yes, I’d missed (or, more likely, misinterpreted) the words “each day”. Of course, in my defence, that is the only reference to his return travel anywhere in the article, everything else is exclusively about his morning journey to work.
I have a problem with telling everyone to use HOP cards with top up as the fix here.
A large number of the reports users get is that the machine is broken at the platform so they can’t buy paper tickets – but also in a lot of cases the tag on/off machine is not working either.
So if you can’t tag on/off then you are no better off than someone who can’t buy a ticket due to broken machine are you.
But more to the point – the HOP card readers used by the inspectors on the train will show you as not tagged on so will whack you $20 penalty fare.
So how does that help avoid the fine?
I’m thinking keeping a stack of $10 HOP cards, when challenged,say machine broken, and hand them the HOP card then walk away.
Cheaper to do than the $20 penalty rort.
The whole problem is the HOP “system” as implemented now is broken – we need more than one reader per platform and more than one machine per platform. So that the chance of both being busted at once is zero.
Or just have one HOP card, tag on and off as normal, and if the tag post is busted, tell the inspectors that the tag post was busted.
I’ve used a HOP card daily since the month they were introduced (6 months?). In all that time I’ve come across a broken tag post exactly once.
The ticket machines are broken far more often – indeed, it is impossible to have a clippie pass down the carriage checking tickets without overhearing reports of broken ticket machines at multiple stations.
Surely this is why they are ordering more machines?
If 1 in every 3 are broken it shouldn’t be a problem once you have 3 at each station.
There do need to be more tag on poijnts from what I hear though.
As a frequent overseas traveller and holder of registered Oyster and Myki cards (as well as AT Hop and Snapper cards) I believe the AT Hop card needs more promotion in order to reduce as much as possible the use of single fare tickets. The promotion should be “whether you are a daily or occasional traveller AT Hop is the card to use”. Achieve this by making the discounts larger (increase the single ticket prices), introducing daily caps for train travel and train/bus (when AT Hop comes to buses?) as used in London and Melbourne. Introduce a really low daily cap for weekend travel as in Melbourne where you can travel all day on trains, buses and trams for a maximum fare of $3.50. This will get the occasional travellers (like those going to events) to try out public transport at a great price. They have had to increase train frequencies during the day in Melbourne on weekends as a result of huge use especially when there are events on. Sharon, I have seen your train inspectors inform people with single tickets that they would get a discount if they used AT Hop – good on them for doing this. Looking forward to AT Hop on the Northern Express with the ability to continue on the train as at present.
No, don’t increase the single-ticket fare, just increase the bloody discount. We already get shafted on fares, we don’t need the bastards to bump up the prices some more.
Do both, drop the Hop 10% and increase the cash 10% makes the discount 30%.
Are there enough HOP purchase points? Even if there are a few (I don’t know, not being in Auckland at the moment), more certainly won’t hurt.
Access is a key issue. You have HOP cards, but some poor guy is walking 5km a day on a dodgy knee because he hasn’t yet felt that he can get one yet (for whatever reason). One of the reasons Myki was such a failure was that paper tickets for purchase were available at dairies all over the city, but Myki cards were scarce (due largely to the lower payments to vendors). Because tickets are sold on vehicle in Auckland, this represents a new revenue stream and shouldn’t be hard to promote to small businesses.
You can buy Myki at every train station in Melbourne can’t you?
Or everyone with staff.
Every ticket machine will dispense a blank Myki for $6.
I think the moment AT HOP is accepted on all buses (BTW when is this?), AT needs to do a blitz to get a hop card into every Aucklanders wallet & yes that does mean handing them out for free. Yes, I know the cards aren’t free to make but there are huge benefits in getting as many people as possible to use HOP cards.
If a card does 20 trips then it has probably saved the council $10 already in time savings so why charge.
I’m still at a loss as to when I need to change my snapper hop to a normal hop, and as to how my money will move across.
I can only hope it will be more straight forward than the dreaded myki in Melbourne.
You will be informed when it happens I’m sure. If you want an AT HOP, you can already apply for a free one online & it’ll be sent to you. I guess you’ll be encouraged to run the balance down when the change over occurs or have the balance changed at a customer service centre.
My problem with using HOP is that it is MORE expensive for me than a cash fare. $6.12 if I use HOP and $5.90 for a 2 hour pass. This is for a bus from Torbay to Auckland hospital. Silly thing is I catch it at the 2nd stop so it can slow things down if I dont have correct change. I have heard it is more expensive for Uni students from Whangaoroa to use HOP card than other ways as well.
Yeah, hopefully the AT HOP system will provide a comprehensive set of integrated fares.
The fare structure is changing as part of the new network. Can’r come soon enough. It is ridiculous that i I wake a transfer on the way to uni it costs me a dollar more.
I know there’s a lot to the whole ticketing program but the delays are even starting to bug me and I consider myself fairly patient. C’mon already. Make it happen! Why do the buses need so long to roll out the AT HOP card? Now that Snapper has gone, this is supposed to pretty much be a turn key operation. What’s the excuse this time?
I agree Myki was a mess but not any longer. The Metcard paper tickets have gone. Myki only on the trams and buses. Myki cards and topups are available from every 7-eleven store in Melbourne as well as a large number of independent convenience stores (which we call dairies). You have to have a Myki card to use the trams and buses. (Every train station has a Myki topup machine as well) When AT HOP comes to the buses it should eventually become the case in Auckland that there are no paper tickets issued on board. And AT HOP must be able to calculate and charge the best fare as is the case with these type of cards overseas. Ridiculous that it only covers single fares on the trains at the moment.
My main issue with myki was that the cards didn’t work 25% of the time and that if you have automatic topup and your credit card number changes you have to send your card away for two weeks to get it unlocked.
Myki worked well for me in Melbourne. Whether paper tickets should be replaced in the short to medium term I would say no, but possibly in the long term. I’d be inclined to keep paper tickets, although I’d expect 90% of users to be on HOP after full implementation.
Myki is a dog in my opinion. I gave up and went back to metcard when I lived there, but have just spent a week back in Melbourne where it is now the only option. It’s much easier now that it is fully rolled out, but the read time is noticeably slow and the failure rate high. It’s just clunky.
AT Hop is much faster and much more reliable in my experience, seems like we got the right system for once.
You can also buy myki cards from any myki machine on platforms, some tram stops and bus interchanges. You just select how much you want to load and pay that plus the card fee. Why don’t AT sell them from their machines?
Myki only on trains now too, was over there in December. Never had lag issues or failure issues though…..
It would be good if train managers could still sell “emergency” cash tickets for when passengers claim the machines won’t work. This would reduce fare evasion.
How would that decrease fare invasion? I can only see it increasing fare invasion as you would take your chances knowing that a train manager will just charge you normal fare every now and then when caught.
Surely AT should be trying to encourage fare invasion?
Seriously though, isn’t the answer obvious? Have train managers and RPOs sell HOP cards on board to people who need an ’emergency’ cash ticket, and have some ability to tag on aboard the train (with an appropriate penalty) so that fare dodgers with HOP cards can be dealt with.
Fare invasion would solve so many problems 🙂
Adelaide have had onboard ticket validators for a while and the new trains there look to continue that concept with placement near the doors.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pC-_2IB54TM. They also have quite a good simple video on how to use the machines to stop the “didn’t know how” excuse.
Seems to make sense for Auckland given the open stations and feral element/vandalism levels, but must be a reason why not used?
I have tried to use these flash machines once, but sunstrike prevented me reading the display so I just gave up and caught the next train.
The old sunstrike excuse….
I cannot buy a ticket if I cannot read the screen, or is that concept too advanced for you?
They’re not just missing the opportunity to promote HOP, but train travel in general. AT have swung the completely opposite direction, because they are simply incapable of considering what’s most convenient for the customer. Yes, ticket machines at stations is a great start. There should be at least 2 at every station and they should be impeccibly maintained. But sometimes you don’t have time to fiddle with the machine when a train is coming. It’s happended to me at Henderson more than once. A queue of 10-15 people trying to use 1 machine and here comes a train. Am I going to miss my train because each transaction takes 30 – 60 seconds? Here’s where AT get it wrong. They now make it impossible to purchase tickets on a train at all. This is wrong. The option should still be available for those who can’t use the machine. They can further disincentivise this by making these on-train purchases a bit more expensive so it’s a rare occasion to do so, but some flexibility is required. But once again they choose what’s easier for them, not what’s easiest for customers. Grrrrr.
Dude, buy a HOP card.
But I do agree with you, at least until the ticket machines are fully rolled out it would be a good idea.
You can buy a ticket onboard, but it will cost you $20.
Get a hop card and you’ll only need to use the machine every now and again to top up. Get a hop and arrange an auto top up from your bank account and you’ll never need to use a ticket machine again.
A couple of points:
– Telling people to use the AT HOP card so that they can avoid the hassle of using the machines is to effectively say “we have put in place a horrible system and won’t be fixing it, so here’s your alternative”.
– There are plenty of people who 30 years on have yet to use an ATM for the first time, or use a cellphone. The HOP card will never be seen as easy or convenient by many elderly folk, so while it may seem simple to younger people, it’s important to keep in mind that isn’t the case for many.