My Key? A Lanyard!
In my life of actively using Melbourne public transport I have experienced four different ticketing regimes with the latest starting this week. The monthly and weekly Metcards are gone so now I am getting familiar with MyKi.
And naturally I am whining over this forced change on my routines and habits. I am sure I did the same for the Metcard with its automated vending and validating machines. I may even have done it for the amusing scratch tickets. And with every change I adjusted. But for now I want to express my concerns with MyKi.
Forget even asking me to comment on the price. I have to pay whatever I am charged and that has always been the case. I can hope for price rises to slow (as I did here) but I am a captive audience to public transport and am interested in other criteria too.
Convenience and confidence are big things for me. Every time I remove my wallet from my pocket and remove a ticket from my wallet is a moment of thinking and judging and getting it right in a constantly shifting environment of the milling crowd. I like to get it done swiftly and smoothly. I get fumbly sometimes and then I am suddenly bothering others getting stuck behind me as I try to fit a ticket into whatever interface allows me to escape the station.
A concern then for me with MyKi is that I need to be flashing it about a whole lot more than I did with Metcard. What I once did for every journey it now seems I have to do for every leg of every journey in order to get those barriers opening at the end. This was a stressful notion to me. It is fine for the MyKi itself – the sturdy plastic smartcard will last. One advantage it has over all the older methods is its reduction of wastage – gone are the days of me throwing tickets away every day or week. But away from the environment and back to me.
I have discovered one thing that addresses my stress over my dexterous performance in handling a MyKi and it is another bit of plastic – a lanyard! I currently have one for work and have inserted the MyKi into it. This makes things a whole lot smoother for me and safer for my wallet. Now all I have to do is actually remember to touch on and touch off all the bloody time – a small interruption to what is some of my best absent-minded thinking time of the day. I hope I can keep the lanyard beyond the end-date of my contract.
And naturally I am whining over this forced change on my routines and habits. I am sure I did the same for the Metcard with its automated vending and validating machines. I may even have done it for the amusing scratch tickets. And with every change I adjusted. But for now I want to express my concerns with MyKi.
Forget even asking me to comment on the price. I have to pay whatever I am charged and that has always been the case. I can hope for price rises to slow (as I did here) but I am a captive audience to public transport and am interested in other criteria too.
Convenience and confidence are big things for me. Every time I remove my wallet from my pocket and remove a ticket from my wallet is a moment of thinking and judging and getting it right in a constantly shifting environment of the milling crowd. I like to get it done swiftly and smoothly. I get fumbly sometimes and then I am suddenly bothering others getting stuck behind me as I try to fit a ticket into whatever interface allows me to escape the station.
A concern then for me with MyKi is that I need to be flashing it about a whole lot more than I did with Metcard. What I once did for every journey it now seems I have to do for every leg of every journey in order to get those barriers opening at the end. This was a stressful notion to me. It is fine for the MyKi itself – the sturdy plastic smartcard will last. One advantage it has over all the older methods is its reduction of wastage – gone are the days of me throwing tickets away every day or week. But away from the environment and back to me.
I have discovered one thing that addresses my stress over my dexterous performance in handling a MyKi and it is another bit of plastic – a lanyard! I currently have one for work and have inserted the MyKi into it. This makes things a whole lot smoother for me and safer for my wallet. Now all I have to do is actually remember to touch on and touch off all the bloody time – a small interruption to what is some of my best absent-minded thinking time of the day. I hope I can keep the lanyard beyond the end-date of my contract.
posted by Dan at
31.3.12
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home