myki likes it

There's a certain type of people who hang around train stations in the city who always garner a great deal of annoyance. They're the ones handing out flyers or brochures or whatever, always sticking it in your face and making you feel all guilty whenever you don't take it.
Well, that's the majority of them. There's another kind, and a large proportion still, who avoid giving anything to Caucasians whatsoever - one of my personal victories was walking right up to one of these people, asking for one of their precious flyers, and then marching proudly away, mightily declaring 'white power' as I left. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I did that. I'm just sick like that, I guess.

But anyhow, the point is, they're trying to get rid of the wad of papers in their hand. That's what they're paid for, that's what their angle is, and that's what their burden is. All around the stations in abundance lately, however, has emerged a new breed. Ones who come in packs of three to five, wearing bright blue shirts, and looking entirely unlike the part. For you see, they aren't actively walking towards you and trying to pass on their information about their product. Instead, they're standing around chatting to one another, simply staring down as people whiz by in large numbers. They're not approaching anyone; it's as if they're afraid that they won't have the answers, or that their product simply isn't that good at all.

That product is myki.

So after all my years of bitching and moaning, after all these years of futile train services, assault on late-night carriages, and miserable Connex staff who seem less concerned for your safety and more concerned why you bought a concession ticket, Victoria will be seeing its first real development in the public transport scene in the four years that I have been an active commuter.

I mean, good for them. It's a good idea and it ought to help shape things up a bit. I'm not about to complain about the amount of time, money and energy they used on setting up all of those myki stations about a year and a half ago that would sit there and do nothing, curiously on at all times to tell us 'NOT IN USE' (I'm sure the amount of power these stations use is minimal, but why use any at all?), or the fact that this whole project has been a shaky failure in its development process which started back in 2005.

No. I'm instead going to giddily celebrate the wonderful transport industry and my hero Lynne Kosky for ushering in a revolutionary new ticketing system. After all, every good new system needs a fair bit of tinkering, even ones that were initially set to launch in 2007. Ignoring the fact that Singapore is one place that springs to mind that has had a similar system in place since 2002, and could have been one point of reference to have sped up the process by about a year or two, I'm just so happy that this is finally happening.

And we've already got a massive supply of nervous employees on hand who are unaware of the system, who will no doubt be very useful (if they're still around on launch) in trying to explain why it is that your myki isn't working. It's the same with any electronic. It will fail, shortly after launch. It's had 'successful trials' in such bustling burgs as Ballarat and Bendigo, but you can't feasibly reason that they're anywhere near prepared for the massive impact that the Melbourne metropolitan region will bring. The extra couple years of tinkering will help, but judging by the way that train carriages are still horrendously overfilled and some busy areas like Melton still don't see frequent train services, it's clear that the transport industry still hasn't recognised how to cater towards their growing bevy of customers.

Expect the mX to be filled to the brim with complaints, expect the transport industry to brush it off as 'a minor hiccup', and expect, dare I say, for the system to be briefly pulled and Metcards to be hastily ushered back in for a short period of time while they try and work out what the hell is going wrong.

Press reports indicate we should expect myki in five days. Funny then, how other than a few blue-shirted dweebs who appear frightened and mute, we've had no indication about this happening. If they're filled with confidence about this system, shouldn't it be plastered up everywhere? Shouldn't everyone be made aware of the exciting world of myki?

When Kosky came under fire for the delayed implimination of the system back in 2007, she said that it was a complicated system and it was "important to get it right". Unfortunately for us frequent commuters, I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything that's been done in the last few years of public transport that I would consider something they "got right".