It’s been a big day with today’s launch of MyWay+. Unfortunately, things aren’t going quite as we would have liked, and it seems like there are still a lot of bugs which should have been ironed out in testing.
We know the ACT Government is hard at work trying to fix things, but as things stand on Wednesday 27 November, below is the good, the bad and the ugly of MyWay+.
What’s working
Bank cards are go
By all accounts, it’s pretty easy to tap on and off with your Visa or Mastercard. This is the feature Canberrans have wanted for a long time, and it’s good to see it being relatively easy to use. If your friend
The ordinary MyWay+ card works just as well, and it seems a little faster to load than the earlier MyWay cards.
Unfortunately, that’s the only real bit of good news right now, as it’s been a rather chaotic day on the buses.
What they need to fix right now
We need more working equipment
For a while we thought Transport Canberra was too slow to roll out the new validators (the machines you tap your card against), and we wondered how they were going to get everything installed on the new buses by Wednesday. Turns out we were right, and only 75% of validators were operational today, according to Transport Canberra. That’s 1 in 4 out of action, and not counting the unknown number of buses which won’t get MyWay+ equipment at all, because they’re due to be retired soon.
What we didn’t expect was for the validators at light rail stops to be non-operational too. They were either out of action entirely, or displayed a blank white screen, and passengers didn’t know whether they’d tapped on or not.
Validators are too quiet and too slow to turn on
On the buses, it’s common for the validators to only be ready to tap once you’re approaching a stop. But we’ve seen all too often that they don’t turn on until several seconds after the bus has arrived at a stop, meaning that people have to wait around to tap on or off. Transport Canberra assures us they’re working on this, but we’re still hearing of problem on some buses today.
You’d also be familiar with the pleasing “BEEP” that lets you and the driver know you’ve properly tapped on. Unfortunately, the MyWay+ validiators just let out a humble little chirp, and don’t provide reassurance to passengers that they’ve successfully boarded. Hopefully they can fix this easily, as it’s particularly important for passengers with limited vision.
Tweaks to the Apple app to register bank cards
Owners of iPhones are having trouble linking their bank cards to their MyWay+ account. Apparently this is because the Safari browser automatically blocks the pop-up window for the account-linking service.
There are ways around this, but Transport Canberra should be able to change the defaults to make this seamless.
Fix the default options on the journey planner
When you open the MyWay+ app, the first thing you see is a journey planner. We’re not that convinced it’s necessary, given some of the excellent trip planning tools from Google, Apple and a number of third party apps. But the weird thing about this tool is it doesn’t recommend you use public transport. Instead, it will recommend motorcycle, driving, cycling, taxi and walking all before it recommends using public transport.
There are ways to change the settings so it suggests public transport options instead. But they need to change the defaults so that when people open up a public transport app, they can rightfully expect to be given public transport options.
More MyWay+ cards
We appreciate all the new payment options, but many people are content using traditional dedicated transport fare cards to tap on and off. This is particularly important for concessionaires, who might have trouble registering their account (see below). But they’re having trouble getting them. There are only 30 or so retailers who offer MyWay+ cards and they are frequently selling out. Apparently they’re only getting batches of 200 or so at a time, which isn’t enough when approximately 40,000 people use public transport in Canberra every day.
We understand that supermarkets, petrol stations and other retailers will be part of the distribution network soon. But until that happens, we need a much higher volume of cards available at the places currently stocking them.
Clearer communications
One of the biggest issues in the leadup has been that passengers and drivers feel confused about the rollout. There are a lot of questions about cards, payment options and concessions which need some fine-tuning.
But what stood out today was a lack of a simple message about what passengers were supposed to do. In the past few weeks, we had a lot of publicity saying “MyWay+ is coming”, but what would have been better is for every bus to have had a sign telling people to tap on and off for every trip beginning Wednesday. We know the ACT Government actually had simple and effective messages to hand, as this media release shows. But they need to do more at getting these out to the public.
What else needs to be fixed
Displaying your balance on the validator
We were surprised to hear this one. On the old MyWay+ system, and on any every other transport smart card we’re aware of, the validators tell you how much your journey cost, and your account balance if you have one.
For whatever reason, we don’t have that functionality, and it’s unlikely to arrive for another 6 months. This is very disappointing
Family accounts to make it easy to register child concessions
The options for passengers with a concession are either:
- get a concession MyWay+ card from a retailer
- register their concession to their MyWay+ account
As said above, MyWay+ cards are in short supply, and families may struggle to get one at short notice anyway. So parents have been trying to register their children for a MyWay+ account, which unfortunately requires each child to have their own email address for each separate account, which, as a lot of parents will tell you, a lot of kids don’t have.
Part of the MyWay+ offering is to allow family accounts, which would allow a parent to register and oversee their children’ s concession accounts. However, this feature isn’t here yet.
Real-time information
This is the biggest mystery of all to us: where is the real-time information which tells you how far away your bus is from the stop? The old NXTBUS system was on its last legs, and no-one was surprised it was retired when the old MyWay switched off in September.
But today the MyWay+ app shows buses as “scheduled”, and doesn’t offer any real-time information. The 3rd party app developers we’ve spoken to haven’t heard anything from Transport Canberra about it either. MyWay+ was purchased as both a ticketing and a real-time information system, so it is very surprising we’ve only seen one side of it so far.