Some background

An integral part of the original Myki system was ticket machines onboard trams – they would have allowed passengers to top up their myki, or to purchase a ‘Short Term Ticket’ if they didn’t hold a myki.

A single ticket machine was installed onboard a Melbourne tram in early 2009 as part of the myki field trial program, with it remaining in place but not in use until at least November 2011.

Short Term Tickets were a cardboard smartcard which entitled the holder to 2 hour of travel, for a cost slightly more than the normal fare charged to standard myki users.

Sales of these tickets commenced in 2009 when Myki went live in Geelong, and they continue to be sold onboard buses in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Seymour and the Latrobe Valley until 2013.

In Melbourne the sale of Short Term Tickets was never enabled, with the option to do so being disabled for all myki machines located in the city.

The rollout of short term fares and myki machines onboard trams was cancelled by the Baillieu Government in June 2011, acting on advice contained in a secret report by consulting firm Deloitte.

One reason given for the reason for the withdrawal of Short Term Ticket was due to the cards costing $0.40 cents each to manufacture – making up almost half of the $0.90 charged for a concession bus fare in Geelong!

In 2011 Yarra Trams said that the change would reduce the tram company’s costs, boost space for passengers and reduce fare evasion issues by eliminating a key reason given for not buying a ticket.

Everyone else says the cancellation of Short Term Tickets and onboard top ups make it much more difficult for passengers who only use trams to pay their fare.

Enter the Public Transport Victoria API

Back in March 2014 Public Transport Victoria finally opened up the application program interface (API) which powers their mobile apps, so I decided to have a play around with it.

With the mobile landscape already littered with hundreds of different trip planning apps, I decided to build something slightly different – something to point out how the lack of ticket purchase options onboard trams was wasting the time of the intending passengers.

The API allows programmers to access all kinds of data – tram routes and Myki retailers being two of them, so I built an app that caters for two use cases:

• you’re at home, work, or a friend’s house – and you’ve discovered that you don’t have a Myki on hand. Where is the nearest place to buy a new one, and how far will this detour take compared to purchasing a ticket onboard the tram?
• you’ve just stepped onto a tram and discovered that you don’t have any credit left on your Myki. How far will you have to walk to top up, and then where can you get back on your way?

The end result is ‘walki‘ – a small app that works on any device with a web browser.

The logic in the app is as follows:

1. Show the user their current location,
2. Calculate distance to nearest tram stop,
3. Calculate distance to nearest Myki retailer,
4. Calculate distance from Myki retailer back to nearest tram stop,
5. Plot the walking routes on a map,
6. Compare the distances for each,
7. And finally, show the user much further they have to walk thanks to the lack of ticket sales onboard trams.

Simple?

You can see it for yourself at https://wongm.com/walki/, or using these examples.

Technology

The app itself isn’t anything revolutionary from a technology standpoint.

In the backend I’m using boring old PHP to gather tram stop and myki retailer locations through calls to the PTV API, with the resulting data being mashed around in Javascript until they are drawn out on a pretty map.

The frontend code is static HTML files with a smattering of jQuery Mobile (‘state of the art’ for 2014? :-P) over the top, with the maps being drawn using the Google Maps JavaScript API v3.

The files are all hosted on my vanilla Apache web server, and you can find the source code on GitHub.

Footnote

Here is the original article from The Age – Melbourne’s myki retailers: Where is the nearest place to top up my myki?, by Craig Butt and Andy Ball.

They are the myki dead zones – the tram stops where the nearest place to top up your myki is at least a kilometre away.

If you do not have any credit on your myki you are expected to take reasonable steps to top up, but from these locations you rack up at least 1200 paces to get to the nearest store or machine.

Using the interactive below, you can detect myki dead zones on your tram line and find out where the nearest myki retailer is, in case you ever find yourself short on credit.

One consideration I completely forgot about was the opening hours of Myki retailers:

But keep in mind the opening times of the retailer. When we trekked 1.5 kilometres through Melbourne’s biggest myki desert on a scorching 31 degree day to top up at Bundoora Post Office, we were fortunate enough to get there half an hour before closing time.

But we would have been out of luck after 5pm that afternoon, after midday on Saturday, or when it is closed all day on Sunday.

About 95 per cent of the state’s 800-plus myki retail outlets are open on Saturday, 75 per cent on Sunday and 32.5 per cent are open all hours.

But one thing we did agree on is the lack of Myki retailers along route 86.

And if you live near Plenty Road in Bundoora and rely on the route 86 tram, you’re in the worst spot in Melbourne.

The stop at the corner of Plenty Road and Greenwood Drive is the worst myki dead zone in Victoria for trams. If you forget your card or are out of credit, it’s a 1.5 kilometre walk to the nearest post office to top up.

I included a few examples in my app, one from Reservoir resulting in an extra 1.86 kilometre (23 minute) long walk!

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Take a look at this Google Maps view of Melbourne’s western suburbs, where I’ve circled the freeway interchanges.

The interchange of the Western Ring Road and the West Gate Freeway doesn’t look too bad – both freeways appear in the same dark orange colour, with the surrounding local roads displayed in a slightly lighter shade, as are the ramps to Geelong Road.

A bit more confusing is the junction of the Bolte Bridge and West Gate Freeway – the ramps linking the two are shown in a different shade to the freeways themselves, making the map harder to read.

But the junction of the Western Ring Road and Deer Park Bypass is virtually unreadable – the ramps linking the freeways are coloured so light they almost disappear into the grey background.

The same flaw can be found where the Metropolitan Ring Road and Craigieburn Bypass meet in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

Turns out the art and science of drawing maps is hard – that is why the field has a name: cartography.

Footnote

In 2016 American cartographer Justin O’Beirne wrote this piece on changes to Google’s cartography.

Looking at the maps, there are more roads than there once were—and fewer cities.

I wonder what drove these changes?

One thing’s for sure: today’s maps look unbalanced. There’s too many roads and not enough cities.

As well as comparing Google Maps with Apple Maps.

Both are in a race to become the world’s first Universal Map — that is, the first map used by a majority of the global population. In many ways, this makes Google Maps and Apple Maps two of the most important maps ever made.

Who will get there first?

And will design be a factor?

In this series of essays, we’ll compare and contrast the cartographic designs of Google Maps and Apple Maps. We’ll take a look at what’s on each map and how each map is styled, and we’ll try to uncover the biggest differences between the two.

I wonder how often a human at Google actually looks at the maps that their automated systems generate.

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When looking for a major street like Bourke Street, Google beings up a page featuring a map, photos, and an extract from Wikipedia.

If you search for a minor street, you don’t get the photos, but you do get a map.

But in the case of Zacara Court in Deer Park, the search results were just real estate listings.

Until I reached the bottom of the first page, when two links to streetdirectory.com.au appeared.

I clicked through, and I was now looking at imagery from the 2010 edition of the Melway, and an empty paddock.

But when I zoomed it, I finally found the street I was looking for.

Is mapping really that hard?

The source of truth

I almost forgot about the official Victorian Register of Geographic Names – the VICNAMES database.

As you might expect for a public road, Zacara Court was easy to find.

Footnote

Thanks to Mike in the comments for picking up my incorrect use of Zacara Place instead of the correct Zacara Court – in both cases a Google Search doesn’t include a direct link to Google Maps.

Thankfully my confusion around the type of street doesn’t change the outcome of this blog post!

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Still around & still the most reliable #melbourne maps. More up-to-date mapping than #googlemaps. Also on iOS http://t.co/8qOl7sTl80

— Melway Maps (@MelwayMaps) November 12, 2014

I had spent a morning near Footscray station, waiting to photograph a steam train headed from Newport to Castlemaine.

My vantage point was in the middle of a public park, but I didn’t know the name of it.

I plugged ‘Footscray’ in Google Maps, scrolled around a bit, and ended up with this map – no dice!

I then headed over to street-directory.com.au, which uses Melway maps, and found my answer.

Turns out Fordham Reserve is the park I had been standing in.

The plot thickens

On closer inspection, in the above example the Melway map is actually out of date – the connection from Whitehall Street into Neilson Place was severed back in December 2011 when Regional Rail Link works commenced through Footscray, yet it is still shown as a through road.

I believe that street-directory.com.au still uses Melway maps dating back to 2010, which might explain the discrepancy.

Footnote

The Regional Rail Link Authority is part way through reinstating the Fordham Reserve, as during the construction of the two additional tracks through Footscray, the entire area was a work site.

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