The Public Transport Association of Canberra (PTCBR) has welcomed today’s release of the ACT Legislative Assembly inquiry report into the procurement and delivery of Canberra’s new MyWay+ ticketing system.
The report confirms that MyWay+ was launched when it was not ready for public use and in non-compliance with accessibility requirements.
“This report details a project that ignored community advice and failed to deliver on basic requirements,” said Dr Amy Jelacic, Chair of PTCBR. “As PTCBR has said repeatedly, Canberrans just wanted a simple and reliable public transport ticketing system.”
The report found that the community user testing undertaken was so disorganised as to be “almost meaningless”, and that the system was launched with basic features missing. This is in line with what PTCBR has consistently heard from the community.
PTCBR is pleased to see that the Inquiry centred the experiences of ordinary Canberrans. Public transport systems must be intuitive, user-friendly, and accessible, and the Inquiry’s report unfortunately reveals many points of failure here.
Concerningly, the inquiry also found that Transport Canberra officials “failed to take the security vulnerabilities and data breaches reported by members of the public seriously”, and denied the issues “despite clear evidence to the contrary”.
Dr Jelacic said, “I call on the ACT Government to commit to implementing the report’s recommendations in full. This includes the call for project management reform focused on accessibility compliance, and restoring key features like showing a passenger’s card balance on the validator screen.”
“PTCBR commends the authors of the report on a thorough document that sets out a complex issue in a fair and impactful way – and sets a clear path for positive change to ensure the ACT Government can successfully deliver major projects in the future.”
“PTCBR will be watching closely to ensure this report leads to timely further improvements to the MyWay+ system, and more broadly, that it leads to meaningful change at Transport Canberra.”
Amy Jelacic is the Chair of the Public Transport Association of Canberra, a public transport users group committed to improving public transport in the ACT and surrounding region