Talk:SmartRider

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Assessment comments The following comments were left by the assessors: (edit · refresh) I am satisfied after reviewing the article this morning that it qualifies for a rating of B in line with the relevant quality scale. thewinchester 00:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

should this really be merged with Transperth, as i have extenended it to quite a long article --Djone2121 11:28, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Removed merge headline 2 Rewrite needed? 3 Control Group Message 4 Rewrtie 5 UWA 6 Added information about controlled stations 7 Technical Information 8 Criticism 9 Reworked

[edit] Removed merge headline

Agreed. I removed the merge headline per Djone21, and because there was no good reason for merging listed here. splintax ^(talk) 14:08, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite needed?

Seems the texts are the same as the website, may we better rewrite this article to ensure the copyright status, otherwise somebody may consider the text that extened as copyvio. --Shinjiman ⇔ ♨ 15:47, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Control Group Message

I got this message too, but is it really neccesary to have it as part of the article? No. I think it should be deleted ~ Trisreed my talk my contribs 08:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrtie

I'd think I was reading the SmartRider guide everyone got in the mail! Seriously though, it isn't neccessary.--M Johnson (talk • contribs) 10:29, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UWA

UWA full time students now have access to Tertiary SmartRider.

[edit] Added information about controlled stations

I'm a UWA student who gets off at Warwick and Whitfords (both controlled stations) and as they're quite different from the other stations and mentioned seperately on the Transperth website I think they needed to be included.

I haven't deleted Warwick and Whitfords from the "Closed" list or added Kelmscott as an exception on the "Open" list because this is my first edit and I don't want to go deleting things until I've got the hang of it! Madge Carew 12:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Technical Information

I would really like to see the Technical Information section of this article expanded to see the type of technology in use, and more particularly a discussion's of the PTA's decision not to stick with using the defined stored value segment of the multi-application card form factor used for the system. I have some knowledge of this, but I do not have detailed enough information which would enable me to expand this section. Thewinchester 09:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

On reviewing this article today, I have found there is a section titled Criticism added to the article, with some discussion regarding privacy and design aspects of the system. These changes were made by Symode09 on December 17, 2006 between 12:59 and 13:08 UTC. First and foremost, this looks entirely based on original research violating WP:NOR and WP:V, and would also give rise to issues under WP:NPOV. Additionally, none of the statements or claims added here have any citations or references to support the claims and statements made. I have cleaned up the statements as much as appropriate and added the relevant fact templates in, but I will now also be inserting the POVSection and SectOR templates into the relevant point of the article. If the unverified claims remain after 14 days, then they will be removed from the article. thewinchester 06:54, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

this information is collected from criticism pages from identical systems used overseas. It does have some origional research, how can this be proven to comply with wikipedia?

symode09 01:10, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Put in a link to the other site...Hack 03:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Try and find academic or other sources that back up your view quoted in verifiable sources. I wouldn't doubt there's been an article or two in the West or the Sunday Times reporting criticism of the SmartRider (hell, there's plenty of scope for criticism - I was one of the triallers and happily went back to my MultiRider after it :)) Orderinchaos78 17:23, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Too bad you quoted The Worst Australian who never could get their facts right, particularly when it came to the default fare. I've updated the criticisms section to accurately reflect exactly how the default fare is applied. I too was a Control Group user (Second Tranche for those who know what that means), and i'd never go back to the ol' Multirider despite a few issues which were worked out in the space of a few calls to the lovely boys and girls at Serco handling the public side of the control group. thewinchester 08:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

All I got was excuses and non-answers out of anyone I tried to call with regards to problems I had with it - generally people trying to claim it did work, e.g. when my balance suddenly dropped by $27 for no apparent reason - and when it ceased to be free or discounted, I ceased to use it ... in the end it was costing me about 20% more than the Multiriders due to the errors which everyone (including bus drivers and Transperth station employees) seemed to be very aware of. Incidentally, the recent correction to the article re the four-zone thing is incorrect - I was charged four-zone default fare several times on a bus whose destination was a two-zone fare had I gone the entire route. Maybe they've changed (fixed) it since though. As a curiosity - did they EVER fix the gates on platform 5 at Perth? Orderinchaos78 06:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Depends on the issue. The gate line at MPH P5 was originally designed badly as it was placed way too close to the escalators thus would have caused issues with the full rollout with passengers bunching up. These were moved back some months ago and a larger 'lobby' area was created to alleviate the issue. As for faulty gates not working at times, these I believe were fixed around the same time. One of the things which is really annoying however considering the system is now in full rollout is the gate configurations are still not down pat when adjusted for peak hour flows. This will come with time. thewinchester 12:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reworked

The wording of much of the article was quite awkward, and some parts looked like they'd been transported directly from promotional material by Transperth. Also, the tone of parts suggested a source which is now 3-4 months out of date. I put considerable work into fixing what is there - it probably still needs further work, as it reads in a somewhat disjointed and non-logical fashion, which is essential to fix along with sourcing/citation if we want this article to get beyond Start-class into B and beyond.

I left Criticism untouched as it is still under active consideration. It will be a challenge to source as, obviously, advocates of a system (government, Transperth etc) aren't going to publish criticism of their own plans, and a lot of the negative impacts have not received a wider audience yet. The system's 2-year-late implementation and the fact they've kept with the MultiRiders even after the implementation despite earlier published plans suggests it's not as trouble-free as they make out. Orderinchaos78 17:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Addendum: I fixed some of the Criticism section, and added a Costs subsection to deal with queries I found in the West Australian and on Hansard. Orderinchaos78 06:12, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I expect better of you OIC. First, Multiriders have not been kept on after implementation because of troubles. It has always been the stated intention since they first planned the system (And I know because it was one of the key questions I asked as a member of the public on the major focus groups they ran on the system back in 2002) to keep multiriders on as part of a phased rollout, in much the same way they did with the older style of larger hole punch multirider they phased out in the very early 90's. The phase in plan of Smartrider calls for the multirider system to operate in paralell for a period of two months, done specifically to enable those with the multiriders to clear any outstanding travel and convert to the new system. After this date those who still have multiriders with valid trips can present them at appointed transperth locations to have the outstanding fares converted onto a smartrider. As for you claim about the system being two years late, again you're wrong. The system was originally slated to go live in December 2005, but as those who know about the system are more than well aware they as part of the first control group uncovered many more issues than they expected. A significant number of these were corrected, and then control group two was brought online in January 2006. There were additional changes in the full go live date for the public, as they were originally going to bring all users online at once. As is well documented in the article, they went to a staged go live as a means of further testing the system under even increasing usage patterns. It also needs to be said that this is the first system of it's kind to go live in Australia, and has had significantly less problems than other systems being proposed for Queensland, NSW, and Victoria. The majority of fare systems are zone-based, thus this posed significant mobile technology issues which for the most part had not been explored in the Australian context. I don't mind people having their say about the technology or deployment, but if you're going to shoot your mouth off then for your own sake get your facts straight. thewinchester 13:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, the published plans that I have read dating from 2005 anticipated that the final stage, which would be public release, would coincide with the *cessation of sale* of Multiriders from that point forward. This has not happened. Of course the machines still accept them - parallel operation is an inevitable part of any rollout. But based on the published plans, what is happening now should theoretically not be happening. It didn't happen when the punch-hole ones got phased out - they simply stopped selling the old ones and started selling the new ones, although had machines to accept both for quite a while and offered 1-for-1 replacements of new and used ones. Secondly, I don't understand your comment re zones - both the old and new systems use zones, although the Planning Minister has in the last couple of weeks expressed a preference towards phasing that out (prematurely, IMO). Also your edit: "During the expanded control group phase the discount on default fares was removed to penalise a significant number of users who were continually failing to tag off." does not stack up - as an Adult SmartRider user in the expanded control group, even after the refunding stopped, the fare being charged was $2.64 every time - i.e. $3.00 (cash fare) less exactly 12%. I did query the fact this was not the 15% advertised with various Serco/Transperth people but never got anywhere (although this may have been anticipatory of the fare rise to $3.10, from which it is 15%). Finally, my edits the other night were to fix a very odd article with issues against every single Wikipedia policy. The article, as I said above, still has problems, but the purpose of the effort was to make the article move forward into something acceptable for Wikipedia, which will be a group effort from all of us - while some of us are opponents of the system as implemented and others are supporters, a lot of the basics in getting an article like this together are essentially common to both and the differences are at the margins. Orderinchaos78 08:01, 28 January 2007 (UTC)