News & Discussion: Trams

[Norman]

When the tram lines are extended the free area should extend to North Adelaide,, (turn back facilities would most likely be built at the last stop on O'Connell so you can have more frequent city services on nights / weekends etc). Entertainment Centre would only remain free if the line is not extended, Brighton Road to Moseley Square is free and still would be, no one really cares about that one anyway.
So basically within the Parklands is free plus Jetty Road and Entertainment Centre - if not extended.
Anyone have any idea if route numbers are going to be used?
Route 1 would be Glenelg to City (Hindmarsh), will the numbers be through routed eg 13 Blair Athol to Mitcham Station or just to the city eg 13 Blair Athol to City and Changes to 9 City to Mitcham Station.
Going by Melbourne, everyone knows the 86, no one calls it the Bundoora tram.

After speaking to the DPTI guys, I am pretty sure there won't be any route numbers.

[Brucetiki]

The advantage of interstate ticketing systems that require tap-on and tap-off is the data collection that shows where passengers actually start and finish their journeys. That would allow route planners to easily monitor times of day when it would be helpful to have some trams go in other directions at the big junction. The current system requires manual monitoring and collating information to discover if people choose to change trams/buses to finish their journey.

With the vast majority of Victoria's tram network in 'Zone 1', the only time you need to tap off on a tram with Myki is if you are travelling entirely within a 'Zone 2' area (which I believe is the last parts of routes 75, 86 and 109 only).

[rubberman]

Any workers spotted tonight?!

Had a look at 9pm last night, and lunchtime today. Nada. Zip. Nic. Apart from the sign saying work was going to start.

[rubberman]

The advantage of interstate ticketing systems that require tap-on and tap-off is the data collection that shows where passengers actually start and finish their journeys. That would allow route planners to easily monitor times of day when it would be helpful to have some trams go in other directions at the big junction. The current system requires manual monitoring and collating information to discover if people choose to change trams/buses to finish their journey.

With the vast majority of Victoria's tram network in 'Zone 1', the only time you need to tap off on a tram with Myki is if you are travelling entirely within a 'Zone 2' area (which I believe is the last parts of routes 75, 86 and 109 only).

Which, of course, means they get almost no more information for spending $1.5bn.

[timtam20292]

Ugh really? Well I'm on my way to the mall shortly so I will take a look.

[Westside]

Data intensive schemes are always expensive. For the cost of MYKI, they could have bought 200 new trams, and had Adelaide in as consultants to install the identical system to ours...with money left over.

200 new trams and a simpler system, plus change, vs some nebulous "benefit" from a data dump. No brainer.

That's not to say that in the future, such information might be worth capturing. But not at the expense of 200 trams thanks.

I'm not familiar enough with either system to know how they work, how much data is stored on the card vs on the server, nor how often the vehicles need to contact the server and how they operate between updates. Since I can check my balance online from home, there has been some communication to a central server after my trip. Maybe they only collect number of trips, not start locations now.

The key issues in SA would be re-educating users, who are used to tapping once, and we have a very simple, almost-flat fare structure.

Collecting data of where the public transport users do travel might help to optimise some routes, but still doesn't collect data about the potential passengers who don't use it at all due to the poor connections and routes available

I suggest the key issue in SA is this: We can have a MYKI system with all that lovely data, or we can keep the existing system, and with the money we save we can fund a lot of the entire Adelink project. Such IT systems are so expensive, you can actually buy 50 trams and about 25km of double track for the same price. I'd rather have the trams.

This whole aregument is invalid. The problem was not regarding data intensive vs non-intensive. The comparison is between bespoke and off the shelf. We could have both, we just chose to have a simple one tap system.

Canberra has just one fare zone, but we still have to tap on and off. If you forget to tap off you get charged as if it were a cash fare. No biggy, but at twice the price of a MyWay fare, people change their habits quickly. MyWay was installed just before MetroCard and was an off the shelf (same internal application as Perth) purchase, like MetroCard system. So it was cheap as, but still gathers a much richer dataset than a one tap system.

VicMetro chose to build their own. Big mistake. That'd be like if they'd said "Off The Shelf Trams don't meet our specifications, so we're going to send some public servants down to Broadmeadows so we can build them from scratch".

Still, it annoys me that I carry 2 metrocards in Adelaide depending on my journey (my parents live within the 2-section zone from the city, my siblings do not). A tap on/off system would calculate the fare for you so you'd get the best deal. In Canberra you use myway for every trip, if you have a lot of trips in one day, then the maximum you are charged is the day-trip fare. If you make a heap of trips in a consecutive month, then you are charged the maximum monthly rate for that month. You don't need to plan ahead and buy a month pass or a day pass, only to use part of it. This kind of stuff pisses passengers off and puts them off catching PT.

Anyway, here is an example from a single 2-bus trip of what I can see on my MyWay card, a system that is no more expensive (relatively in regards to city size) than MetroCard (Sorry for lack of formatting). This is just what I can see, so imagine what the operators can do when they have the full picture in front of them!

Date / Time TX No Boarding Type Route Stop Name Amount Deduction Type Balance
Jul 2 2016 6:10PM  000028 TAP OFF - Stored Value  950N  Flemington Road  $0  NORMAL   $27.31 
Jul 2 2016 5:52PM  000027 TAP ON  TRANSFER  950N  City Bus Stn Plt 8  $27.31 
Jul 2 2016 5:28PM  000026 TAP OFF - Stored Value  900N  City Bus Stn Plt 3  $-2.25  NORMAL   $27.31 
Jul 2 2016 5:12PM  000025 TAP ON  INITIAL  900N  Woden Stn Plt 9 $29.56 

[timtam20292]

Yep, just a sign.

[Llessur2002]

In all fairness, if geotech investigation work had been undertaken overnight then it's quite likely that it wouldn't be very obvious today - just the tops of boreholes, possibly under covers. You'd have to know where to look for them.

Not saying that anything actually happened, but it might have done.

[monotonehell]

I liek trains.

Just out of interest, does anyone have any data on how tapping off affects unload times on trams? I can see how it works where you have barriers , like on subways, but how about random access vehicles like trams and busses?

[rubberman]

In all fairness, if geotech investigation work had been undertaken overnight then it's quite likely that it wouldn't be very obvious today - just the tops of boreholes, possibly under covers. You'd have to know where to look for them.

Not saying that anything actually happened, but it might have done.

True. I'm a bit curious though. Usually geotech and service location is done at design stage rather than construction. Plus, since North Terrace had trams for 50 years, then buses and trucks pounding the pavement since then, I'm wondering what on earth a cursory geotech might reveal?

Westside. Off the shelf tap-on/tap-off systems are usually so generic, there's usually no business case for buying one vs using our tap on system and hiring some students with clip boards to do traffic surveys a few times per year. It's usually some data gunzel in management that likes making up pie charts and PowerPoint presentations that pushes them, not any discernible operational benefit. Most realistic business cases for tap-on/tap-off are: meh!

[claybro]

Tap on/ off or tag on as they refer to it in Perth, does allow more flexability in fare structure as it can charge you per distance travelled and not just the old zone setup which can be cost saving for commuters, but also more efficient for operators. However, from my experience here, forgetting to tag off is very expensive, as after the journey time elapses, you get charged full fare regardless of the distance travelled.

[Nathan]

Not sure if it's related to the tramline work or not, but all the angled car parking out the front of Ayers House has been closed off.

[bits]

Are we sure the metrocard system could not collect decent data?

Someone else posted that after tapping on the transaction appears in the account very fast.
From that we can assume the machines are constantly linked to the central servers likely via ip.
If ip based the machines will have at least a unique mac address if not another unique machine id for transactions.
The transaction time is also easy if not already stored anyway.
Which machine is on which bus is surely known, we have gps and timetables for where buses are.

Most users will need to catch a bus to go back where they came from so we have the from and to locations.

Linking this all together is childs play if we really want the data.

[Norman]

Not sure if it's related to the tramline work or not, but all the angled car parking out the front of Ayers House has been closed off.

I did hear that they will be working from ORAH to King William Street, so most of the action will be there.

[timtam20292]

I would've thought they'd start at the King William Street/Road and North Terrace intersection and work their way from there?