The Public Transport Ombudsman has received more than 8000 complaints in two years – with many about the myki ticketing system.
”Over the past two years, cases have remained at the highest level since the PTO began operations in 2004. Myki continued to be the main cause of inquiries and complaints, making up 33 per cent of case receipt in July to December 2013,” the Public Transport Ombudsman’s latest newsletter said.
There were 1935 complaints to the ombudsman from July to December last year, including 637 related to myki, 352 about Metro and 104 about Yarra Trams.
While still the highest cause of complaints, inquiries about myki have declined from a six-month peak of 1183 complaints in January to June 2012.
Myki began operating on Melbourne trains at the end of 2009 and by the end of 2012 was in full service with the end of Metcard.
Complaints to the public transport watchdog escalated sharply in 2012, with 2382 complaints for the first six months – up from 882 for January to June 2011.
Public Transport Ombudsman Janine Young said: ”Myki is about 45 per cent of what we do and that is unsurprising given the fact it is the ticketing system and the one thing in common across all the modes of transport.
”There are about 1 million myki transactions every day and the vast majority of those go very well, there’s a few issues that are still outstanding.”
She said there were not a lot of calls about the lack of short-term or daily public transport tickets.
She said most complaints regarding myki related to information provided by ticketing staff and the speed of refunds and reimbursements.
”There has been a delay in the processing of those [refunds] by myki over recent months so that has caused an increase in cases to us about that,” Ms Young said.
She said the other continuing myki issue was bus passengers being charged for the wrong zone.
Public Transport Users Association president Tony Morton said the thousands of complaints to the ombudsman were evidence of ”systemic problems”.
He said public transport operators should be resolving complaints before they get to the ombudsman.
Meanwhile, a group of activists called Public Transport Not Traffic has launched a campaign to collect recommendations about how the system should be improved.
Users can pinpoint the location of upgrades they would like to see to the public transport network using an interactive map.
