Sydney’s mytrain weekly tickets are made for– you guessed it– weekly use. The average user would carry around these tickets for at least two train journeys per workday, plus excursions at the weekend.

However, the weekly mytrain tickets are made from paper, just as are the single-use or return tickets.

This is stupid.

Paper wrinkles, and the ticket-reading machines on Sydney buses and at train stations cannot read wrinkled tickets. These mangled tickets, mere victims of life in a commuter’s pocket, get spat back out with a “fault” or “invalid” message.

Bus drivers and train station attendants are so used to seeing these unreadable multi-use tickets that they barely give them a glance. This is how they deal with an inherently flawed implementation (paper) of what is essentially a good idea (multi-use transit tickets).

Basically, transit staff members don’t give a shit. So, what happens if you just use an expired and wrinkled ticket? Chances are that the driver or gate attendant won’t read it. Mind you, you could get fined if you try to pass a fake ticket, but your chance of getting caught is, in my experience, slim. Using a valid yet unreadable ticket, I’ve been challenged once in something like 27 transactions.

NYC’s Metrocard is plastic. Rechargable and easily recyclable. Bendable but not wrinkle-prone. Is plastic more expensive to create and distribute? Answer that question with another question: how much fare money is Sydney’s transit system giving up with a paper ticketing system that’s doomed by design?

Sydney’s bats are still hanging around in the Botanical Gardens. The decision was made to use industrial noise to evict the bats from the Botanicals.

Sydney’s flying foxes are not without friends, though. It is argued that the bat relocation plan fails to take into account possible future interactions with humans. In other words, what if the bats just move to another urban park? Why wouldn’t they, considering how many green spaces there are in Sydney?

Grey-headed flying foxes are a protected species, but critics argue that they are destroying the trees in the Botanical Gardens, which are right next to Sydney Opera House.

We saw this fine specimen the other evening, accompanied by around 100 of his friends. They were flitting out into the dusky sky after a hard day of… well, being a bat.

Just look at all the parks in Sydney. How can anyone possibly guarantee that the bat diaspora won’t just regroup in, say, Centennial Park or Moor Park?

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Previously, on IJT: the grey-headed flying fox colony that populates Sydney’s Botanical Gardens were to be moved. As the huge bats stopped commuting in from the mountains and embraced the downtown lifestyle, they were destroying the fragile trees of the Gardens.

The plan to relocate the bats via sound disruption was put on hold, though, as the Bat Relocation Squad (not what they’re really called, but what they should be called) are not yet able to track the bats once they’re moved. In other words, they won’t know where the bats end up.

The relocation project will be delayed for up to a year. Read the quote below aloud in the gravelly Christian Bale Batman voice for maximum effect.

The Trust says it does not believe it has enough time to tag all the foxes and complete any follow up action that might be needed in this year’s non-breeding season.

Photo: ultrahi (CC Licensed via Flickr)