04-07-2025
Inquiry into Transport Canberra's MyWay+ continues as functionality issues persist
Seven months since the ACT government launched its MyWay+ ticketing system, functionality issues persist and an inquiry has raised questions about its rollout.
An ACT parliamentary committee, tasked with looking into the procurement and delivery of the public transport ticketing system, was due to report by the last sitting day of June 2025.
But a day earlier, committee chair Jo Clay announced that deadline had been extended due to "the considerable volume of evidence".
"Including reports of significant usability issues experienced by MyWay+ users, and concerns relating to accessibility and cybersecurity," she said.
"The committee is of the view that in order to properly discharge its responsibility ... tabling a report by the last sitting day of June would not be possible."
At that stage, 109 submissions had been published and the committee had held five hearings and called multiple witnesses, including government officials, ministers, contractors and commuters.
But, like many frustrated Canberrans, the committee had more questions than answers — as was heard this week.
On launch, some MyWay+ customers were unable to tap on and off with their debit or credit cards, while others reported issues with the app, website and QR code system.
Transport Minister Chris Steel told the inquiry yesterday that most launch-day issues have been fixed.
"While a number of issues have been resolved quickly, others have taken more time," he said.
"In hindsight, certainly some of the elements were not ready, as ready as they could have been. That's clear. But a lot of those were rectified fairly soon after launch in November."
But multiple users told ABC Radio Canberra the MyWay+ readers still didn't work, resulting in "free trips".
"MyWay+ is the best! I've had endless free travel! I couldn't ask for more!" one listener texted in.
"Another free trip to work today due to a non-working MyWay+ reader," said another.
Another user said, "MyWay minus just another in a history of failures."
Commuters have also reported problems with the system's live tracking functionality, and being charged on Fare Free Fridays.
"When [will] destination information boards be connected at interchanges?" asked another.
In March, the inquiry heard that the personal details of public transport users could be accessed on the internet before and after the MyWay+ launch.
This week's inquiry questioned whether community testing on the system was adequate, and suggested the community should have been told that it was a "minimum viable product" so expectations weren't as high on day one.
"We could have done better in terms of communicating about this as a transition, rather than expecting everything to go right on day one — clearly that didn't happen," Mr Steel conceded.
But Mr Steel insisted that going ahead with the November launch was still the best approach.
"A slightly later commencement probably would've provided a few options there, but I still think a decision around the hard switchover minimised confusion for the community around the change from MyWay to MyWay+," he said.
"It's not just about the revenue loss, it's about customer behaviour. If you have a long period of time when no fares are collected, and then you switch on a system 15 months later, then people are not in the habit of paying for public transport and there is a big behavioural change that's required."
MyWay+ executive Mark White said Transport Canberra was prepared for last year's launch.
"More than 6.7 million journeys have been used, using debit cards, credit cards."
Another of the issues raised in the inquiry was around the contract Transport Canberra signed with NEC Australia.
The inquiry heard that delivery milestones were pushed back after the contract had been signed.
The contract was meant to be completed by June 30, 2025, but it hasn't been.
"We are currently engaged in contract discussions with the provider, as to why it's not complete and what penalties we may be applying," Mr White said.
Yet to be completed is the disability compliance aspect of the contract.
"There is no mechanism within the contract for us to actually penalise [breaches] of the Disability and Discrimination Act," Mr White said, adding that there were "other pieces of functionality" that remained incomplete.
"There are other components, more in the functional back-end side of the system. So, that's our data systems and data warehouse," he said.
"Off the top of my head, there are other functionalities that we would be providing to the community as well as our operators; things that are enhancements to manage our transport systems, as well as to manage our account-based ticketing."
The deadline for the inquiry committee to report back to the Assembly has not been announced yet.
