Reluctantly I went to the ticket machine to purchase a ticket. I was asked which ticket I wanted, told how much it would cost and after paying the money, I got what I payed for, a ticket. Nothing more, nothing less, just a ticket. Not surprising as this was a ticket machine but you would think with today's technology, over 40 years after the first man landed on the moon with hand held mobile devices that play music, record video and even allow you to talk to other people, that a machine capable of dispensing a ticket could do more than just dispense tickets.
For example, there are a number of ways of getting around the city, bus, train, ferry, walking. There are even a number of buses that can take you to the same destination, some faster than others. If my goal was to reach a destination in the shortest possible time, why couldn't this marvel of modern science, the ticket machine, ask me my destination, calculate the quickest way to get there, provide me with a number of trip alternatives and dispense the appropriate ticket. Why is the onus on the passenger to understand which ticket they need and which bus stop to go to to get to their destination in the shortest possible time.
I guess there are two answer to these questions:
- Passengers needed to have tickets before boarding the public transport system and Transport NSW had to have a way of dispensing tickets to passengers so immediately they looked for a ticket dispensing machine.
- After identifying a desire to "efficiently" dispense tickets, there goal was then to find someone that could supply ticket dispensing machine. They didn't look to address the needs of the customer, that is, how can we assist a passenger on their journey, what they did do is address an internal need to dispense tickets and so they ended up with ticket machines, nothing more, nothing less, the ticket machine does what it says it does.