When New South Wales finally introduced the Opal card to speed up the transport system it brought an end to queuing up at train stations and bus stops to buy paper tickets. This new system required passengers to tap their card on a card "reader " when they got on a tram or a train, and tap again to end their fare at journeys end.
One of the early problems was the need of many passengers to use a mix of transport on their daily commute. Those that needed the services of a tram,bus, train or ferry to complete their journey found that the cost using an Opal card was greater than when they travelled on a weekly, monthly or yearly ticket - all of which were discontinued when Opal arrived.
The government resolved this enigma with a concession arrangement. They arrived at the magic number of eight journeys per week for the average commute, and once this was reached - travel for the rest of the week was free. This was not perfect, but it " averaged " the mix of a great number of commuters and offered price relief.
It didn't take long for a few gifted souls to put together a regimen to "game the system ". The wheeze was quite simple. Early in the week, select a number of closely related tram and train interchanges so that a number of short journeys will be debited against your Opal card - and from then on the rest of the week is free. Very quickly, the transport sector began to record a revenue shortfall.
One of the marvels of private enterprise is the speed with which opportunity morphs into a new business. A new phenomenon began to appear very early each week. A number of young persons - often employing a skateboard to speed the journey - who would stop and swipe a great number of individual Opal cards as they hopped on a tram or entered a train station. They were working to a very carefully constructed time and motion plan to achieve the required number of journeys in the fastest possible time. They were also working to a cost budget. They would meet their target for just $ 18 in fares - and thus make a huge saving on the the cost of the usual weekly commute.
It quickly became obvious that this was being worked on a commission basis. These "couriers " had an arrangement with commuters who would hand over their Opal card and pay a "fee "for the service of managing the number of interchanges that would bring the free travel into play for the rest of the week. This was now costing the government transport section two million dollars a week in revenue loss.
Just as these couriers had done their algorithms to bring down the time factor to achieve the necessary number of short journeys to ninety minutes, the government's whiz kids ran the numbers and increased the number of interchanges from three - to eight. That will extend the time factor to achieve the same result - from ninety minutes to six hours - and hopefully - make providing that service uneconomic.
In today's world - there is always an algorithm that creates problems - and usually another one to provide a solution !
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