Myciti’s card kicks convenience to back of bus

THE CITY council has confirmed that from January 28 paper tickets will be discontinued and only Myconnect cards, preloaded with cash, can be used (Cape Argus, January 17). I confirmed this with Myciti’s call centre.

While the card’s main advantages are for the operator, as tickets will not be issued on board, it inconveniences the user, whose needs should be the prime focus of any delivery system.

I’ve used the Myciti bus occasionally between the Waterfront and the CBD and am impressed. However, as a casual passenger now and in the forseeable future, I see no need to buy a card, load money on to it and pay the bank fee for a service I may use a few times a year. What of passengers – tourists, for example – who will only ever take one trip?

My niece, who was in Spain last year, says they use cards and paper tickets, which you can buy on the bus. In Italy, biglietto – as many as one needs – are purchased from vendors and validated on the bus using an honesty-based system. London’s transport system also has the card and paper ticket option, which you can buy – singles, returns, daily – at tube stations.

These well-run mass transport systems, to name a few, work very well with paper tickets, so why is the city trying to reinvent the wheel, so to speak? Why do they feel the need to be cleverer than everyone else?

I think they have painted themselves into a corner with the card sys- tem. This is the same typical bureaucratic, cart-before-the-horse thinking that created the Gauteng e-tolling debacle.

A public transport system should be accessible and convenient to anyone who wants to use it. By insisting on only the card, the city has eliminated public preference and convenience from the equation.