Normally I have an annual public transport ticket. Given that the cost is > $2K, and as a small compensation for moving the office to the city fringes (and thereby hitting us with an extra 40 minutes per day of commuting time), the company buys the ticket and deducts it from our salaries. But for reasons that I won’t go into, I'm currently between annual tickets which means going back to buy them weekly.

Because of the timing of public holidays, most people have found their renewal date falling on a Tuesday. You can buy the ticket at any time from 3:30pm on Monday. But on Monday afternoon you still end up with queues which are 20 to 30 people long at each ticket machine and ticket window. If you're running late (usually because the commuting bus was), you just don't have time to wait.

Plan A is to grab the ticket when you get back to your own station. Until you see... this. And of course the ticket window was unmanned at 18:10.

Plan B is to grab it the following morning when, you guessed it, there will be long queues. Or would be, if the machine had worked.

Option C is to explain to any ticket inspectors that you encounter on Tuesday that their machine was broken or risk a $200 fine. (Which is why it's useful to have a PAD shot of the said machine in one's camera.)

Option D, what would option D be... Oh wait, I know! CityRail could start selling fortnightly tickets. Not everyone would want to pony up the cash for two weeks of travel, but for those who did they'd need to face the queues only half as often. Consequently the queues would be shorter. Maybe not by 50%, but certainly by an appreciable percentage.

No, it makes too much sense.

Last Year