The minister and his staffer. Yes, we’ve heard the numerous rumours about the federal cabinet minister having an extra-marital affair with a staffer. Yes, we’ve heard the arguments that they are in a “compromising position” in relation to their ministerial duties. We’re not convinced. And until there’s evidence to suggest their role as a government minister is compromised by what is essentially a private matter, we won’t be naming them.

Dishing the dirt. Regarding John Brumby’s dirt unit: In the past, families that have businesses in electorates have been used to spy on people.

Labor tirade against disclosure. With the Greens pushing hard to win the rapidly gentrifying Victorian state seat of Northcote from Labor Right head-kicker Fiona Richardson at the November 27 state election, lone Greens councillor Trent McCarthy was on his feet with no less than five motions at last night’s City of Darebin council meeting. McCarthy is surrounded by eight Labor councillors and struck some particularly aggressive resistance to his transparency agenda as it related to greater disclosure of councillor expenses.

Veteran Labor councillor Steven Tsitas, looking resplendent in a Collingwood jumper under his suit, launched a tirade against the move that he said would “facilitate lazy journalism” and “aid and abet the muckrakers who wish to pour the proverbial bucket over us”.

With two young female reporters from Fairfax and News Corp watching on, Tsitas referred to some historical disclosure of his expenses as a “shame gallery in the local paper”. “We remember, we don’t forget, some us don’t forgive either”, Tsitas growled. Cr Tsitas disclosed his expenses are currently the subject of an FOI request by state Liberal Helen Shardey, who he predicted would soon “table a facetious report in parliament”.

The Tsitas opposition to McCarthy’s motion was defeated by more moderate Labor councillors, led by former mayor and lone women Diana Asmar, who made the obvious point that the issue was “more about being transparent”.

The Tele‘s own gossip. Holt Street hacks are upset about a budding romance between two key staffers on the Sunday Telegraph. Journos with grievances against either of the pair are finding nowhere to go since they got together at the start of the year. Relationships in the office are now very strained. It’s like a pot of boiling water ready to steam over at any minute.

My dirty school. Remember that awesome Greens ad shown on Gruen Nation during the recent federal election campaign? The agency that made it has now made a TV ad for the cleaners union (LHMU) in Victoria for their MyDirtySchool campaign against the Victorian government during the coming state election. Apparently it’s pretty shocking and shows some very confronting images of dirty schools.

NAPLAN test cheating. I was interested to see recently that Queensland schools have been prosecuted for NAPLAN cheating. I would like to whistleblow about a NAPLAN cheating incident at one Tasmanian high school. After the last NAPLAN test had finished, and before they had to be sent away, the assistant principal of the school called the names of about 15 children over the PA and asked them to go to the library. When there, they were given NAPLAN papers they hadn’t completed and given sufficient time to complete all the questions. This was done without the knowledge of the teachers.

Revealing the spin. Victorian Secretary of Transport Jim Betts calms bureaucrats’ nerves over bad Myki PR earlier this year:

A summary of a presentation from Secretary of Transport.

Thanks to all of you who (despite the need to reschedule a few sessions — sorry about that) attended the recent Transport: The Untold Story briefings in the theatrette. Overall, we had about 850 people attend, and the feedback was very positive. Sufficiently positive, in fact, that we’ll be arranging further sessions to update you on key transport issues every three months or so.

For those of you who were unable to attend, or who lack a photographic memory, I thought I’d recap some of the key points in a series of Bulletins.

The first part of the presentation focused on recent media coverage of transport. My purpose was not to claim that everything was perfect on our transport system, but rather to demonstrate that media coverage is biased towards the negative. Headlines about crises, conflicts and meltdowns are more likely to shift newspapers than stories about successful project delivery or improved services. Hence “the untold story”.

I’m also very aware (from personal experience) that if you work in the transport sector, you are constantly being challenged by friends, family and new acquaintances to account for the performance of the system, whether it be myki or late trains. And it can be demoralising to read such unremittingly negative coverage about the industry to which we dedicate our working lives. I hope that readers of this bulletin will feel better equipped to put the positive side of the story next time they are challenged to do so.

There were a number of themes to the media coverage in the first three months of 2010, and the subject I want to cover in this first bulletin is myki.

The new ticketing system has been described in the press as a fiasco and a waste of money, behind schedule, over budget and completely unnecessary.

In this context, there are four main questions about myki which keep being asked.

First, why do we need a new ticketing system at all? The current Metcard system is performing perfectly well; why fix what isn’t broken?

Well, it’s true that Metcard is performing well, with instances of machines being out of order now very rare. But it is an ageing system, with maybe three years left on the clock. As time passes, the technology which underpins Metcard (both software and hardware) becomes harder to support.

Anyone who has recently tried to get a computer from the late 1990s repaired will know what I’m talking about — and Metcard was designed in the early 1990s! It needs replacing.

Dozens of major cities around the world are using smartcards as the basis for their new ticketing systems; it’s standard technology of the age, allowing much greater flexibility to charge discount fares, reducing maintenance costs and cutting queueing times. The fact that Metcard can keep operating well for a few more years means that this is the ideal time to implementing myki — with Metcard as a readily available alternative as we fine tune the new system for mass usage.

Second, why is myki so expensive? Media reports suggest it is costing $1.35 billion to implement.

The $1.35 billion figure is misleading. About $500 million of that amount relates to the costs of operating myki over the ten year period following its implementation. About $150 million relates to the cost of operating the existing Metcard system while myki is being implemented. That leaves $700 million as the cost of implementing myki. That’s a lot money, but needs to be seen in the context of (a) the fact that myki will be collecting well over $500 million each year in fares revenue and (b) the fact that it is a statewide system, covering regional buses, coaches and V/Line as well as trains, trams and buses in Melbourne. By the way, the story in the press last week suggesting that more than a third of the overall budget is going on “state bureaucrats” was completely wrong and without any foundation in fact.

Cost comparisons with other jurisdictions can also be misleading:

Brisbane’s Go Card system covers a physical area of 10,000 square kilometres — 4% the size of myki; Perth’s SmartRider covers 2% of the area which myki covers.

Third, why has myki taken so long to implement?

The contract to build myki was awarded in mid-2005, and it’s expected to go fully live in Melbourne later this year — so that’s a five year implementation program. That compares with five years for Brisbane’s (much smaller) system, four years for Perth’s (even smaller) system, 10 years for London’s Oyster card and even longer for San Francisco’s Translink card.

Generally, myki’s implementation has taken about the same amount of time as other, comparable systems. The problem is that myki’s supplier dramatically over-estimated how quickly it could be implemented (ie, in world record time) and we believed them. The moral of the story: in future, we should under-promise and over-deliver, not the other way round.

Finally, why didn’t we just buy a system off the shelf, eg from Hong Kong, Singapore or London?

There are many aspects of myki technology which are, in fact, “off the shelf”. The fare payment devices (or card readers), for instance, use pretty bog standard technology, tried and tested elsewhere. But for other, more complex aspects of ticketing like software, it’s very hard to transplant technology from one place to another: each jurisdiction using smartcards around the world has its own characteristics. Some cities have flat fares where you pay the same amount regardless of how far you travel.

Some don’t have time-based tickets like our 2 Hour and Daily products.

Some don’t have multi-modal tickets. Some don’t include trams or buses in their smartcard system to avoid the complications of mobile ticket machines having to communicate back to base using GPS communications. Most don’t include regional services. And so on. By the time you allow for all these differences, and the need to adapt any purchased “off the shelf” system to the unique requirements of Victoria’s public transport system, you’d probably find it was at least as complicated (and therefore time-consuming and costly) to buy off the shelf as to acquire a purpose-built system.

Secondly, and importantly, myki is an “open architecture” system. That means we’re not beholden to a single supplier if, over time, we want to add things to myki or replace them. In many other jurisdictions, the ticketing system is designed in such a way that only the company that originally built it can perform this role — which tends to limit the system’s flexibility and drive up costs.

So that’s some of the headlines on myki. The performance of the system has improved steadily since late last year, with initial glitches in card distribution, the website and the call centre being progressively remedied.

But the system’s performance still isn’t up to scratch, and, until it is, we won’t be turning myki on for trams and buses. When will this happen?

When the system is performing well. In the meantime, people who travel on trams and metro buses should keep using Metcard for now.

I’d like to end by paying tribute to the phenomenal efforts of the team at the Transport Ticketing Authority, who are working so hard to deliver myki on our behalf. Well done, team.

In my next bulletin, I’ll be talking about the performance of the train system — the impact on services of extreme heat, Siemens trains overshooting platforms and so on.

Cheers,

Jim

Jim Betts
Secretary