Cheap Therapy

I got on my bus home tonight to notice that the rear section of the bus had its windows covered with fine steel mesh (as used on security screens). I had a sudden fear that I might have accidentally got onto an Australian Corrective Services bus. To prevent a few individuals from scratching their baby scribbles into the bus, half the passengers have to travel like criminals, barely able to see out the windows. Where’s Clint Eastwood when you need him?

So, I find myself buying a family ticket on Transperth, from a machine. Is it “Single”,”Concession” or “Multiple”?
Multiple people, I think, so I press Multiple. Except, the Family ticket option is disabled. Aargh!
Ok, I guess I could buy two DayRiders, except that’s twice as much!
Hmm… Back out. Select “Single”.
Ah, now I can buy a Family ticket. Because you can only buy a single one at a time, it’s under “Single”. It was also pointed out to me that it doesn’t work if you choose “Concession” either (which it could be argued that it is…).
Really they should probably mod it so that the Family option is always enabled and always produces a single family ticket, rather than forcing you to find where the ticket option is. I’m not sure if they log the user interface events on the ticket machines, but it would be interesting to see if they could make some improvements, because I’m sure they could!

Google Transit will provide public transport information for Australia, and they are trialling it for Perth initially. Hopefully this will be a nicer site than Transperth’s current offering (functional), and accessible from mobile devices.

I’m seeing a lot of jobs ads via Google for mining jobs, obviously the shortage of workers is so desperate they’ll accept internet users at places like getajobinthemines ($30 for the inside info in a PDF, or you could probably bribe any mine worker with a carton of beer and minejobsaustralia. Then again at the salaries they’re advertising it sounds like not a bad idea!I hear what a lot of people are doing is to get a job with Transperth as a bus driver (if you’ve seen their ads on every bus they’re obviously desperate, and if you’ll know the drivers are inexperienced) then after they’ve trained you up and you’ve got your heavy rigid licence try to get a job on the mines.

• Thursday - catching up with Rob over dinner
• Friday - a quiet night at home
• Saturday - Shopping, training into the Red Bull Air Race (and catching the last Ferry as the first competitor flew overhead) then a quick walk back around the river (as the Transperth ferries weren’t running for the rest of the weekend), checking out the new Esplanade train station on the way home, finishing firing up the Weber (Jamie’s Moroccan lamb) and dinner (followed by pineapple and black pepper tart tatin) with RedBraids and Mikey-Ob and Rob.
• Sunday - Housemoving, exhaustion, homemade pizza, fevered sleep.

Was on the bus on Tuesday and the bus driver missed a stop outside Churchlands High School. One of the students said “You missed the stop”, so the bus driver pulled over. Of course the bus was now out of the GPS zone around the bus stop, so the students with Smartriders couldn’t tag off. “Don’t worry about that” says the driver, so the students trying to tag off get off the bus.
Of course the driver doesn’t need to worry about that, the students will get charged for a trip all the way to Fremantle on the circle route because they couldn’t tag off!

Today I took my SmartRider card in to be replaced because it was no longer letting me swipe onto/off the bus. So I headed into the CBD (conveniently all the InfoChoice booths where you can get your card replaced are in the city).
I handed over my card and was told that it was cracked down the middle, and it would be $10 to replace. I’d previously looked at the card and couldn’t see any crack, but that was what they claimed.
I suggested that as claimed on the Transperth website the $10 fee is only to replace cards that are (and I quote) “misused”. So I’m not sure how I misused it if I only used it to swipe on and off public transport. The woman behind the counter claimed that they didn’t absorb the cost of replacement cards. I pointed out that other access cards I’ve had for longer still seem to be working quite fine. She suggested that some people bend the card against the reader. I wish I’d said it’s probably because the readers are so crappy at recognising the card from any distance.
She also said I needed to ring up and transfer the autopay to the new card. When I rang up they said the autopay had already been transferred to the new card!
I suggested that as part of the control group mine is one of the older cards out there, I suspect that they’re going to be replacing quite a few of them in the not too distant future. But if they’re going to charge everyone $10 to replace the cards there’s probably not much incentive to get more robust cards, they could probably spin a profit.
So, if you’ve had your card replaced for free after it failed during normal use, please let me know in the comments. They may just be charging everyone $10 on the grounds they “misused” the card.

Transperth wishes to advise that due to a software upgrade malfunction, SmartRider is unavailable on all train lines. During this time, passengers do not need to tag on or tag off train services.

As I caught the 20:02 from the Perth station there were two techs feeding what was presumably a software update into one of the Smartrider terminals. Could be a long night for some.

In case you’re not already on the way to work, remember the turnstiles at the train stations are being closed as of today, so you’ll need to have a SmartRider (or presumably a ticket) to get onto (or off?) the platform.

So, according to Transperth the correct fare is $2.46 for the bus to/from UWA and the drivers are charging me the wrong amount ($2).