Thursday, September 19, 2013

For The Turnstiles....All This And It Only Cost $200 Million.

There'sNoBusiness
LikeTheHatBusinessVille


From Translink's 'Compass System' happy-shiny-peopled Beta Tester blog-thingy:

"...A few of us also spent some time looping through the fare gates to test how they would work with lots of people going through quickly. As designed, the gates simply stayed open during taps—you don’t need to wait for the gate to close behind the person in front of you, you simply tap in and walk through..."


Now.

Just think about that for a nanosecond or three....

Essentially, because there are not enough of the darned gates at the actual stations where people crowd through at rush hour,  the things are actually designed to STAY OPEN when it's busy.

Again....

The so-called 'fare evasion inhibition/safety/keep out the riff-raff' system (which is how it was pitched to us by the Westcoast promotion men, their sycophants and the press release-addicted media in these here parts) will  actually STAY OPEN when the system is busy.

And it is 'designed' to do so.

And it only cost us $200 million dollars.

Meanwhile...

No money for more buses.

As for those Westcoast promotion men?

Well, that's an entirely different story.

One that the press release-addicted refuse to tell.

Why?

I dunno.

Maybe because it's hard?



_______
Tip O' The Non-Content Consultant's Toque to Kevin Harding via his Twittmachine feed.
And now is the time on Sprockets when we....Neil.


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ross,

My favourite part of that blog-thingy:

"And while it’s possible someone could simply follow you in without tapping, just like now, that person would be considered to be on the system without valid fare and subject to a fine."

So essentially $200 million for things to be "just like now".

But what if I paid cash on the bus and had a valid bus transfer on my person. Would I still be considered to be on the system without valid fare and subject to a fine?

I love and your blog, and your BlogCrawl.

DGR

RossK said...

DGR--

That really is quite the follow-up on the blog-thingy, eh?

Wonder if that had the upper level PR shillophants shaking in their boots, or if this actually is the strategy given that they know that the press release-addicted won't even notice?

Great question about the transfer....Maybe we can get Miranda Nelson of the GStraight to chase this one down...I'll float it on the Twittmachine.

Thanks for the comments on the blog, and always willing to consider additions to the blog-crawl if you have a good one.

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James King said...

What can I say. In Paris the gates aren't a problem: You scan your card or feed you magnetic stripe ticket into the machine - push the door/gate and it opens....really tough. And those cars and tickets work all over the system...buses, Metro and RER.
http://en.parisinfo.com/how-to-get-to-and-around-paris/transports-in-paris-and-the-paris-region/public-transport
Strange

RossK said...

JK--

Ya.

But here's the thing...It would appear that the Westcoast Promotion Men, led by the many-hatted one, pushed a system on us that just doesn't have the infrastructure to handle rush hour volumes one person at a time.

So.

Again.

What the heck are we actually getting for our money?

(which is almost invariably going to be an issue with pay-for-play megaprojects, no?)