Myki queues at suburban railway stations in Melbourne – I first wrote about the topic a year ago, when the withdrawal of periodical Metcard tickets led to a massive spike in myki usage. So what has happened since then?
In March 2012 an additional station exit was created at Kensington platform 2: the first stage of the work was cutting a hole in the fence, installing conduits for the electrical connections, and laying the concrete path.
By August 2012 nothing had changed at Kensington: the Myki readers was still to be installed, the fence still blocked access by passengers. At least the rubbish skip was gone!
Apparently the reason for the new entrance remaining closed was the lack of lighting! It took until May 2013 for this to be addressed, when the foundations for a light post were installed next to the entry – the light itself came a few days later.
The final piece of the puzzle was the Myki readers – these were finally installed on June 4 when a Bytecraft technician paid a visit to Kensington.
You would think having a set of working Myki readers beside a floodlit footpath would be enough to open the station entrance, but it wasn’t – the fence stayed in place across the opening.
It took until June 24 for the fence to get taken away, and the new entrance to open for business.
Fifteen months to lay a few square meters of concrete, install a floodlight, and connect up two Myki readers. I hate to think how much this project cost!
Marcus
same story at Brighton Beach station, except EVERYTHING was in place (hole in fence, concreting done, myki validators installed, lighting added). For 3 months I wondered why the “hole in the fence” had a temporary barricade and the validators had covers over them. So I complained to PTV. Very soon,the barricade came down, the myki devices were activated and commuters no longer crush to get thru one set of gates.
Obviously, some idiot just forgot to have the extra gate open.
Given it was PTV I wonder whether they actually sent someone out there to open it, or if it was just a complete coincidence!
I happen to live in that particular area and oh boy! yep!
They did exactly the same thing at Jewell station though a lot sooner than Kensington station. It would be funny to see if any drunk people actually walked into the fence after touching off!
In addition the temporary fencing wouldn’t be stand out very well to a vision impaired person, especially since everything else made it look like a legitimate walkway!
[…] A decade ago Myki had taken over as the only ticketing system in Melbourne, but slow readers resulted in long queues to exit stations. The solution – adding additional Myki readers, in a process that took months. […]