Casey over at Caseyporn.com has a post on his wish for the Sydney public transport system: a smartcard ticketing system.
Funnily enough, I had this conversation with my family and Lucy last Saturday while we were in Queensland. When I lived in Singapore, they had (and still have, I believe) cards you could buy that had a prepaid amount on them, and allowed you to travel on the train/subway/metro system there. You could refill the cards when necessary. Alternatively, single-use cards could also be purchased.
This was a couple of years ago (… 10, actually!), but it's a system that works fairly well. If the STA was to introduce this and add RFID (as Casey has described in the Hong Kong system), it would be a great thing! It saves paper (tons and tons of paper), firstly. It also would make the queues to enter and exit the station much quicker. Take, for instance, Town Hall. In peak hour, the place is an absolute mess. If everyone had a smart card, they could walk through the turnstiles and the system logs their entry. When they get off the train at another station, the system logs the exit from the train system, and the correct amount is debited. One problem with this is that many, many suburban stations don't have ticket machines, so machines to check for the smart cards would have to be added. At a place like Pymble station, though, this could cause congestion, as the stairs are generally split into one side to go up the stairs, and another to go down.
Another issue is people not having smartcards and walking through the ticketing/smartcard machines. I guess they could have the triangular barriers, like they do now, and that would prevent people from getting in/out without a ticket. However, there's still the issue of adding these to many, many suburban stations. Could the STA justify this cost? Even though it would be great for travellers, the government and the STA probably won't see it as a justified expense. It won't make trains more on time, or drivers happier.
One other issue I can think of is privacy. Since the RFID tags can be read by practically anyone, most people would be afraid of being snooped by people with the gadgets to do this. Not such an issue right now, but something to consider.
What would happen to the railpasses that we have currently? Something like the red railpass allows me to travel as much as I want around the city on train and buses (and ferries?) for 7 days for $16, which is good. How would this work with smartcards? Maybe you'd load the railpass onto the card, and any trips in the zone are 'charged' to the pass, but anything outside of it is taken off the normal balance of the card.
I've been referring to the STA (State Transit Authority) throughout this post, instead of Cityrail, because I would hope if this ever did get implemented, they would introduce a universal ticketing system across trains, buses and ferries (perhaps even light rail?). That would make things much, much easier…
Somehow I doubt Cityrail/STA will be doing this anytime soon, though. The train system IS a mess, they've cut back on timetables, they don't have enough drivers, and are even stopping work on the Parramatta - Epping - Chatswood link (if memory serves me correctly) [CORRECTION: Mat tells me that Railcorp has canned the Parramatta end of the link, for now, but the Epping to Chatswood is still under construction]. The management of Cityrail and Railcorp haven't shown themselves to be very strong or insightful in recent times, so I don't think it's likely to occur. *sigh*
Big brother is watching you. Oh wait, its a boring show anyway.