This analysis report scrutinizes the MYKI ticketing system, a crucial component of public transport services in Metropolitan Victoria. Despite its initial intentions to provide transparency and convenience, MYKI encountered significant issues leading to a temporary halt in its rollout. The report systematically outlines the limitations of the existing MYKI system, addressing concerns related to performance, user interfaces, eligibility for discounts, and overall user satisfaction.
To overcome these limitations, the report proposes a set of innovative strategies. Key recommendations include transforming the ‘touch on’ and ‘touch off’ process for users, streamlining fare calculations, enabling automatic top-ups linked to bank accounts, and integrating social media for a more user-friendly experience. These strategies aim to enhance the efficiency, accessibility, and overall user satisfaction of the MYKI system.
The scope of the proposed improvements encompasses changes to validation processes, interfaces, and other system designs. The report outlines high-level requirements for the new system, emphasizing user registration, automatic top-ups, social media integration, and real-time tracking of travel details. Assumptions are made about users having valid bank accounts and the integration of social networks playing a crucial role in the improved model.
Data mining applications will be heavily employed to leverage social media feeds and user travel details for enhanced service delivery. Significant changes in system design, including the adoption of a distributed NoSQL database and cloud deployment, promise improved scalability, speed, and availability. The proposed solution aims to be a cloud-based system with extensive data mining applications, connected to social media and financial networks, and featuring a contactless automated scanning system to reduce user and system scanning time.
In conclusion, this report offers a comprehensive understanding of the potential improvements to the MYKI ticketing system. The proposed enhancements, driven by innovative strategies and technological advancements, seek to overcome the limitations of the existing system, providing a more efficient, user-friendly, and integrated public transportation ticketing solution.
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Part A: Analysis Report
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Table of Contents
Background ................................................................................................................................................... 3
Limitations of the Existing MYKI Ticketing System ................................................................................... 3
Recommended Strategies .............................................................................................................................. 4
Scope of the New System ............................................................................................................................. 5
High Level Requirements of the New System .............................................................................................. 5
Data mining applications .............................................................................................................................. 5
Changes in System Designs .......................................................................................................................... 6
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... 6
References ...................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
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Background MYKI is a ticketing system used for public transport services available in the Metropolitan Victoria area.
Travelers and commuters can purchase MYKI card from some specific sources and can add fund to the
card. Adding fund is known as making ‘top up’ of the card. After a successful top up, the card will have
some fund in it. A user having a valid MYKI card and enough fund in it, can use the card for ‘touch on’ to
specific devices while travelling by train or bus. After the trip is finished, the user will again need to
‘touch off’ the card to some specific devices. These devices are available either with the transports or at
specific locations. After the ‘touch off’, the card will be debited for the fare of the trip. There are some
discounts for special categories of users (Public Transport Victoria, 2015).
The basic model of MYKI ticketing system is aimed at making the ticketing for the public transports
transparent and convenient for the travelers and the commuters. However, the project is not competed yet.
After the initial roll out, the project has been kept on hold as there were a number of issues and negative
feedbacks from the users, even there were some legal cases (Coyne, 2015).
The aim of the analysis report is to summarize the findings from the research on the MYKI ticketing
systems and its limitations. In the following sections of the report, there will be detailed discussion on the
limitations and design errors present in the existing MYKI ticketing system. Based on the identified
limitations and design errors, a number of high level requirements will be outlined for the proposed and
improved version of the existing MYKI system. There will be information on the scope of the system and
other assumptions made for the proposal of the improved MYKI ticketing system.
Limitations of the Existing MYKI Ticketing System MYKI was introduced as a replacement of the Metcard ticketing system. The two major reasons behind
the inception of the MYKI ticketing system was the issues with the durability of the metcard tickets and
the issues of metcard ticketing system in calculating the lowest fare for a trip. However, MYKI, in reality,
failed to become frieldlier to the users when compared to the metcard ticketing system. Survey found that,
passengers voted for Metcard more than they did for MYKI. Hence, there was a big question on the
MYKI project and the roll out was paused. Now, the identified limitations of the MYKI ticketing system
are (Victorian Auditor-General, 2015), (Coyne, 2015),
• Passengers found MYKI ticket validation system slow enough. One of the major complain was,
passengers used to miss trains for the time taken by MYKI systems to validate the tickets. The
scanning system was also.
• Passengers faced serious issues with the ‘touch on’ and ‘touch off’ interfaces. It was found that in
some cases, passengers had to pay fines as the devices failed to recognize their cards during the
‘touch on’ when passengers claimed that they did complete the ‘touch on’ process successfully.
Hence, the interfaces for ‘touch on’ and ‘touch off’ are not robust and user friendly enough.
• MYKI cards offers some discounts for senior citizens and the tourists. But, it is not applicable for
the family trip discounts. Even there is a MYKI system and a person has MYKI card, still, if the
person needs to avail the benefits of family trip then, the person will need to use the conventional
ticketing system instead of MYKI.
• Passengers who wants to purchase ticket for a single trip only, did not found MYKI useful
enough.
• Some commuters and travelers found it difficult to top up their cards prior to travelling also.
• The calculation of fare for multi-trip journey was not transparent to many travelers and they
raised questions and concerns about the calculation process.
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So, the main issues are with the performance of the system, lack of support for all types of users and
different travel scenarios when a user can use MYKI cards and the serious issues with MYKI interfaces.
Even the system also failed to meet the initial goals of making the ticket fare calculation process accurate
and transparent.
Recommended Strategies One of the major issue is the time consumed by the ‘touch on’ and ‘touch off’ process that requires
intentional actions by the users. Now, the process can be changed into a new way so that the users will
just need to carry their MYKI cards. The vehicles will have strong detection systems and antennas that
will automatically track the users who are going on board and entering or leaving the vehicle. This will
save the time of the passengers and their will no longer have to face the slow touch on and touch off
process (Wigan & Clarke, 2014).
The second issue is related to the fare calculation. The system needs to support the all calculations for
senior citizens and passengers. This will need some improvement on the internal logic of the programs
running behind the ticketing system.
The users can connect the MYKI account direct to their bank account. Hence, whenever, the fund on the
MYKI will fall behind certain threshold limit, then the ‘top up’ will be done automatically.
During selling of the tickets, there will be two primary categories of tickets. Those will be for single trip
ticket and for long term use. For the single trip tickets, while purchasing, the tickets will be sold with
some fund asked by the user. The user will need to pay the fees for issuing and adding the fund to those.
To reduce the time, the system can take advantage of ‘social media login’. The users can use their social
media account for creating and registering their MYKI card for single time use. Alternatively, they can
fill the detailed registration form (Victorian Auditor-General, 2015).
When, the MYKI will reduce the balance of a MYKI card, then the detailed explanation for the fares and
charges will be automatically send to the registered mobile and email of the users.
Users will be able to access their MYKI accounts from the websites and the mobile apps. It will help the
users to check the status, validity, fare and discount details and the detailed calculation of the fare for
multi-trip journey.
MYKI funds can be borrowed from one user to another. If there is an emergency and a user needs to top
up his or her card and a friend or relative is willing to do lent some fund from their MYKI account, then
the user can take the loan from the friends. However, this will be used in a case of emergency and there
will be monthly limits on such attempts.
There must be some serious improvement on the backend system for improving the speed of performance
of the overall MYKI networks, the vehicles under the scheme and the works. The system will work based
on GPS. The doors of the vehicles will have some installed devices that will automatically detect the
MYKI cards carried by the users when they will go on board. If it finds some issue with validity or
availability of the fund in some instance, then the details of the user of the MYKI card will be shown on
the attached display panel. So, the bus drivers or assistants can easily point out the person with invalid
card and take proper action.
Users can plan family trip from their accounts. When a family trip plan is created, then a user can add the
MYKI accounts of the other users who are the part of the trip. On a day, during a particular time, a user
can me a part of at most one family trip. The system will record the MYKI numbers. Once these numbers
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are detected during the scanning process on vehicle on boarding, then the system will charge discounted
fares in the possible cases. It will no longer need to use separate tickets for family trips.
Scope of the New System The proposed solution will have some scope. The scope of the new system includes the changed
validation process, interfaces design and so on. The project is focused on the planning part only.
Implementation of the plan though actual coding and software development, is out of the scope of this
project.
The improvements will be implemented on the existing MYKI system. Later, the changes will be made on
the rolled out implementations also.
High Level Requirements of the New System The high level system requirements will covers the main functionalities of the proposed improved
solution for the existing MYKI ticketing system. The high level requirements of the new system are,
• A user can register for a MYKI card
• A user can add a valid bank account for automatic top up
• A user can add money to the MYKI card from a bank account, credit card, digital wallets or from
other MYKI users in a case of emergency top up.
• A user can connect their social media accounts with the MYKI account
• The MYKI ticketing system will automatically validate a MYKI card when it will come into the
proximity of the scanning devices installed on the vehicles.
• A user can get full details of the fare calculation on their MYKI accounts, emails and in SMS.
• A user can avail discounts and other benefits from their MYKI card. There will be no need to
purchase separate tickets.
• A user can plan a family trip from their MYKI account by adding the MYKI of the other family
members.
• A user can open another MYKI account for his/her child.
• A user can track the travel details of his/her child in real time.
For the high level requirements following assumptions are have been made.
• It is assumed that the MYKI users will have valid bank accounts. For the children, their cards will
be connected to their guardians’ accounts. The guardians will have access to their children’s
account.
• Social network will play an important role in the improved model.
Data mining applications In the improved design, data mining applications will be included heavily. The social networks of the
customers will be included in the system. Based on the feeds from the social media networks, and the
travelling details of the users, the services will be delivered. Such integration with the social media and
the applications of data mining will help to reduce the validation time and various other issues related to
filling the top up to the cards in a case of emergency and so on.
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Changes in System Designs There will be major changes in the backend system. It will work on the distributed NoSQL database that
will be highly and easily scalable. The system will need to fetch unstructured and real time data from
web, GPS and social media. Tracking the travel map of children will help their parents to keep an eye on
the safety and security of the system.
The system can be deployed over the cloud. Then it will be more robust, highly scalable on demand as
and when the computing power needs to be more or less. For example, during the office hours, holiday
seasons, there will be more passengers and commuters, hence, during this time, there will be more load on
the system. The load balancing feature of the cloud computing platform will help to make the system fast
always. Cloud computing will automatically keep multiple instances of the data. Hence, the availability of
the system will be very high (Mahmood, 2014).
Conclusion In this report, different aspects of possible improvements of the existing MYKI ticketing system have
been discussed. The possible benefits and the strategies for deploying those improvements have been
covered in the report. The report will be useful for the implementation of the system and to understand
how the proposed improved solution will work and how it is different from the existing MYKI system
and how it overcomes the limitations of the existing MYKI system. In a nutshell, the proposed solution
will be a cloud based solution with extensive applications of data mining and bid data. It will be
connected to social media and banking or financial networks also. The major change will be replacement
of the scanning system with contactless automated scanning system that will reduce the scanning time for
the system and for the users.