Myki ticket system shaping as an expensive mess

Myki is costing $850 million to build and just under $550 million to run over 10 years — a staggering $1.35 billion price tag. There is a severe shortage of trains and trams to service Melbourne right now — $1.35 billion can buy a lot of trains and trams.

via theage.com.au

This article is full of fantastic pull quotes. Somewhere, a decision was made that we shouldn’t buy a (much cheaper) off-the-shelf system and adapt our fare structure to that; rather, we hired all these consultants to adapt a system to our apparently-weird fare structure. Sigh.

And there’s that number again. 1.35 BILLION.

Victoria has 4,645,000 people in it, more or less. That’s $290 from every Victorian, for the privilege of paying for public transport.