Do you hate Myki cards, complain about traffic on the Westgate and have a wardrobe that skews significantly towards darker shades? Congratulations, you’re a real Melburnian – but our number one pet peeve could soon be a thing of the past, with the Andrews government trialing Mobile Myki touching on and off instead of the dreaded Myki.
The state government announced today that it will launch a trial of a new ‘mobile myki’ app that will utilise the Near Field Communications (NFC) capabilities of handsets.
Initially the trial, which will launch “in the coming months,” will be limited to an industry-based group of users before being thrown open to a broader group of participants later this year.
The trial is expected to conclude early next year. The government will then decide whether to permanently offer the service.
“Over the next year we will watch how the trial goes, and make sure we get the technology right before making it available for all Victorians,” said public transport minister Jacinta Allan.
The trial will cost taxpayers as much as $3 million on top of the existing $700 million myki contract, which began last year.
“There is a small additional cost for this of between $2 [million] to $3 million to run the whole trial,” Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan said.
The trial in Melbourne follows Sydney’s introduction – on its small light rail network and on its ferries – of both smartphone and credit card tap on and off facilities.
Other cities where a smartphone app allows travellers to board without a ticket include Houston, London in some circumstances, some Chinese cities, and Singapore.
The Melbourne mobile phone trial will see the technology used across multiple transport modes on the entire Victorian network, without new infrastructure or equipment being built.
“This is a very large and complex network that we have, the ticketing system has to work across all those different aspects of it,” said Ms Allan.
There is no sign of when iPhone users will be able to use their device to pay.
It is the latest development in myki technology, which began in 2005 as a replacement for the old paper ticketing system. By 2016, myki’s rollout had cost Victorians more than $1.5 billion.
The new seven-year myki contract, signed with NTT Data in 2016, will cost Victorians $700 million more.
Part of that deal was for new technology like this to be trialled.
There are no moves to introduce a single-use ticket, the absence of which is a regular source of complaint among public transport users. But a successful smartphone app could negate the need for it.
If the trial is successful, it will allow passengers to top up on the go, check the balance of their myki at any time, avoid ticketing machine queues and reduce the chance of misplacing physical cards.
Ms Allan said the trial would start via a limited, industry-based test group of users on Android devices. If it was a success, it would then be extended to a wider test group later in 2018.
The trial period is expected to run until early 2019.
Existing physical myki cards will remain in use during and after the trial.
Passengers using mobile myki will be able to top up with myki money or a myki pass as they do currently.
Launched in 2008 after three years of preparation, myki now has 12 million active cards and 700 million transactions each year.
Public Transport Victoria chief executive Jeroen Weimar said the app being trialled would allow people to have multiple account holders registered on one device.
Public Transport Users Association spokesman Daniel Bowen welcomed the move, saying it was essential a good ticketing system made it easy for passengers to pay.
He said that, while the trial was a step forward, the technology used would have limitations.
“A lot of mobile phones don’t currently have the … functionality required. And while many public transport systems are implementing payments from contactless credit cards, which are very common, it seems myki isn’t capable of this,” Mr Bowen said.