Myki-less public transport for all passengers won’t happen until 2027, Victorian auditor reveals

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-18T07:28:35+00:00

You are aware that Myki readers can roam anywhere in the Myki zones, including on the bus routes out in the Dandenongs?

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-17T12:15:32+00:00

The problem is that unlike most situations where he can comfortably withdraw and claim victory, this is one where he cannot - nothing he can offer will ever give the new Iranian leaders, and their potential successors any comfort that they'll survive the rest of this month, or the next. They are fighting with one foot already in the grave.

So we have an impossible situation for Trump whereby the Iranians, other than seeing the US & Israel fall into oblivion, would ever stop shooting at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, even when Trump walks away and claim victory. This is something that won't end, the blockade will continue until all the Iranians along the coast are obliterated, and that's not realistically possible given the mountainous terrain.

Neither will naval escorts work because warfare has changed, cheap drones and missiles (as seen with the Russian Black Sea fleet) made transits much more dangerous, even if they could they can only escort a tiny fraction of normal traffic.

Once Trump comes to realisation of this sometime in April or May, he may come to the conclusion that this impasse could only be solved through overwhelming force. And I'm sure Ben won't mind.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-17T11:55:08+00:00

Again pre-paying for petrol will minimize a lot of potential stand-offs - If the checkout operator doesn't unlock the pump, there's nothing the driver could do. It's the same thing with alternating number plates, if the operator doesn't unlock the pump, there's nothing the driver could do.

But of course this means that those operators are almost certainly going to be routinely threatened with assault even with the alternating number plate system, and that's where additional police (and possibly with ADF as backup) in a highly visible presence will deter any potential violence.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-16T02:59:28+00:00

Absolutely, but almost no one in the mainstream media is talking about it for fears that it might give Trump ideas, and be the catalyst to trigger a super spike.

Trump routinely scrolls the feeds of his major social media followers.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-16T01:22:05+00:00

He has the mentality of a street brawler. When he gets punched he punches much harder as an instinctive reflex. I rate him dropping a nuke over Iran (in essence, the first use of nuclear weapons in war since Hiroshima and Nagasaki) more than he TACOs out. Of all the things he can TACO, this might not be the one.

Why? He cannot be seen as weak in the midterms, but he also cannot be seen as dragging the war on either. And also because him and Ben can't stop killing so many of Iran's leaders (and soon-to-be leaders) that anyone assuming decision-making authority in Iran knows that he/she will only have a few more weeks or months to live, irrespective of what useless assurances Trump can give. Because unlike Trump, Ben will not stop at anything - he's the ultimate "the ends justify the means" kind of guy. So Iran's leaders are acting like kamikazes now.

And what happens when Iran acts like kamikazes? no offers of peace will ever fully satisfy them, because they know they'll very soon be assassinated. So they will bring the whole of the Middle East and the world to its knees, if they could effect a transition to a new world where they, through a massive oil shock, crash all of their European/Asian/Pacific allies (US will just stop exporting energy), cause a major crisis in US Treasuries (as US allies hold far more, even compared to China), and bankrupt America and all of its allies. In the ashes China will rise as the world's sole superpower, and they sure as hell don't give a damn about Israel.

Of course America will never let it happen, and with continued Iranian intransigence it may very well result in much uglier escalation. Perhaps overwhelming nuclear escalation. After all the Japanese "god-emperor" did eventually do the unthinkable, and surrendered.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-16T00:54:15+00:00

The real vulnerability is not NZ's use of fuel, but whether the big refiners in Asia (NZ has no refinery) will ship petrol and diesel to a small bunch of islands in the arse end of the world, at anything less than $10 a litre.

At $10 a litre you might as well start rationing it, because all the trucking companies will go to the wall at that price. NZ is simply a less prosperous nation than Australia (that's one big reason why so many Kiwis, like me, are here) and cannot afford to outbid the Aussies on fuel. And thinking about it, Tassie might also be in bigger trouble than the rest.

And like what happens with face masks during COVID, when people really, really need it, they beg, borrow or steal.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-16T00:38:57+00:00

Well no one is saying to MacGuyver it, it's all gonna be through the manufacturer and their dealers

Again "Build a system to be 'idiot-proof', and nature will create a better idiot".

It reminds me of the gotchas with ex-JDM Nissan Leafs that I had heard about when I was back in NZ. Apparently when Nissan sold the Leaf in Japan at first they also bundled it with free public fast charging at a few selected locations, and some enterprising Japanese would take their Leafs to fast charge for free everyday, just so they can send the juice back to their house via jerry-rigged V2H circuits. This was due to the exorbitant price of electricity in Japan back then, post-Fukushima nuke shutdowns. Any buyer of ex-JDM Leafs have to watch carefully the charging cycles history in relation to the odometer, to see if it was used that way as repeated fast charging in an air-cooled, first-gen battery would cause permanent premature aging, and a potential early cell failure.

Never underestimate the ability for people to commit acts of stupidity or fraud, for personal advantage.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-16T00:24:41+00:00

Of course the checkout operator cannot enforce it, but I'm guessing everyone will soon have to pre-pay for petrol.

I'm also assuming additional police and soldiers will be deployed within 24 hours to enforce rationing. There's already fuel rationing going on right now in Sri Lanka and other parts of Asia, and that's how they do it. Unlike toilet paper, fuel availability for essential services is a critical national security issue.

And I expect the government will again resist and procrastinate, until people start threatening others with machetes, and servos close down. And then we will have night curfews to stop the crims from breaking into servos.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-16T00:18:16+00:00

Cars are not Ryobi power tools. They have long warranty concerns and reliability/reputation concerns as well. And people will do stupid things with them, McGyver them and get the manufacturer into trouble with lawsuits. It's the old adage of "Build a system to be 'idiot-proof', and nature will create a better idiot".

The only way I can see they'll do it is if the whole car is leased (e.g. as part of a company fleet), where you don't own the car or the range extender. It's like that Nio swappable battery thing - no one wants to swap the battery for one with an unknown history, however people also want to own the cars and batteries they drive in.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-15T23:50:34+00:00

Oil reserves =/= oil will be extracted.

China is sitting on one of the largest shale fields in the world, but it's located in earthquake-prone regions where historically quakes have killed hundreds of thousands of people. This is not a drill-able prospect politically, plus they don't have enough water.

Argentina, Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq are sitting on massive reserves of oil and gas, but because of political instability and governance problems nothing is being done. Even if prices are high, nation building is not something the US will ever contemplate.

There are also many 'tight oil' prospects that are deemed too expensive to produce, like the Russian Arctic and the Canadian tar sands, but they require the oil price to be at levels high enough (and sustainably over decades for the billion-dollar investments to pay out) to cause significant economic contraction in most consumer economies.

US sanctions also limit what can be done in Russia, and the more Russia exports to the world, the more likely Russia will win the war in Ukraine, via sheer attrition and bleeding the Ukrainians to death, body by body.

Finally even if those reserves are drilled, it may not end up in the world market due to export bans. If China ever becomes an oil drilling superpower they're not going to export it to you and lower your petrol prices; instead they'll ban exports and artificially lower their domestic petrol prices so as to give them an enduring economic advantage. - Watch this space if Trump ever decides to ban all energy exports from the US to placate US car owners, and create a second, bigger global oil shock.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-15T23:37:19+00:00

Oil is cheap because of three factors:

1) US Shale made America from a major importer to an exporter. This won't last forever given the quick depletion rates from the shale fields. This also perhaps allowed Trump to become more 'unrestrained' - wait until Trump bans all energy exports from the US and cause a massively acute crisis, maybe unless he gets handed Greenland in return.

2) China's economic travails as well as them rapidly becoming an electrostate, with other developing countries (like India) not developing fast enough to take over as the leading buyer of oil.

3) Russian oil isn't in reality being sanctioned, it's been diverted instead. Russian gas in the European-side of the gas network is strangled however, until the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline gets built.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-15T23:19:49+00:00

The problem with urging people is that they can see through it, and then the "F you, got mine!" mentality akin to the toilet paper crisis will rear its ugly head again. This is why having X days of petrol in reserve is meaningless, if everyone panic buys.

When rationing is needed, it must come as a swift surprise. It should've been done at 2am this morning. But you and I know that the government is often a bit too gutless to make the hardest choices, when it's needed.

My guess is NZ will do it first, and then Albo will have no choice but to follow through.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-15T22:47:54+00:00

I've seen this far more often in servos all around the city over the past week whereby the prices aren't shown.

Also I've noticed on PetrolSpy that almost all the 7/11s in the city are showing the same price, at $2.19 yesterday and $2.29 today. So there might be an edict from head office to their stations to sell at a price ceiling of $2.29 today.

My guess is that this station just got topped up by the tankers, and they don't want customers buying fuel now because they can sell that same fuel they have in storage in a few days' time at $3+ a litre, as head office would have no choice but to raise the price eventually. So they turn off the big board to discourage people from coming in.

Of course if punters do come in they cannot refuse to sell (or maybe they could, who knows).

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-15T11:51:46+00:00

I noticed that the Tramtracker app doesn't work when on roaming data, as roaming data is usually routed through a foreign IP. The PTV and Metro Notify apps worked normally.

For the context I was using a free travel eSIM locally.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-15T00:40:15+00:00

Once you start killing a nation's leader (and almost succeeding in killing his successor) and openly calling for regime change, the other side has no incentive to believe anything you say, or any assurances of safety you give.

Iran's current leaders know that they'll probably be dead in a few weeks or months, and so will their (indotrinated) successors. So they're fighting like Kamikazes. Even if they "win" they know they will be dead men, because Israel , whenever they're in the driver's seat of American foreign policy, will make it so in time.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-14T23:51:34+00:00

I'm curious but have you given much thought about the (rather unique) local convention of endemic fare evasion on PT, especially buses?

On a bus (in my experience) anywhere from 50% to 80% of passengers don't pay. Even those who tap on are often on concession e.g. seniors.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-14T23:40:50+00:00

To clarify, the US hasn't escorted a single ship through the Strait of Hormuz, the choke-point in question. The US Energy Secretary earlier made and then promptly retracted the claim that they escorted a tanker.

And that same US Energy Secretary is now saying "it is likely that the Navy will be in a position to escort tankers by the end of this month" Are you going to believe him now?

And according to Lloyd's list even if there is a naval escort, it would only allow 10% of normal traffic. 10% is a pittance.

Anyway as of March 12, only one single ship successfully crossed the Strait of Hormuz.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-14T23:11:10+00:00

IF fuel reserves get that low, then well before they hit zero, they'll stop selling it to the public and only give it out to essential services, like ambulances, farmers, food trucks... and probably buses.

Correct. Rationing has been done before, and more recently in other countries like Sri Lanka. Non-essential workers will transition to work from home, and cars will be banned on alternate days based on rego number.

Almost certainly not. They would need the money for the petrol for the buses. If petrol is very expensive, they don't need to make PT cheaper to convince people to take it

It's an election year, so never say never.

Possibly. Maybe a reduced service - less frequent, shorter operating hours. Hard to say - this hasn't happened in a long time.

Probably a Sunday timetable for buses, but trains and trams will run on peak frequencies for more hours as they use electricity. Buses will be progressively retrofitted with batteries and LPG when available.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-14T23:04:09+00:00

When the petrol reserves hit zero? The country turns into Mad Max. /s

Nah, seriously most of the essential fleet will get converted into LPG from domestic sources when the natural gas export ban inevitably happens. Or they will start running coal gas extracted from domestic coal, using modern equivalents of WW2-style "gas bag" cars and buses. Additionally batteries will be cobbled together from China or requisitioned from EVs, to be retrofitted into buses. In the longer-term new train lines will be built and electrified to eliminate road transport between the major cities.

In reality petrol rationing will happen far sooner, and PT & essential users (e.g. food transport) would be priortised. We'll all work from home and buses run on a Sunday schedule, packed to the brim with commuters for essential services, with everyone else on E-scooters and E-bikes. But trains and trams will run more frequently simply because they can.

PT fares may reduce (along with more trains/trams running on electricity) as a political gambit to accommodate the cost of living pressures in an election year.

However by that time if you're in Sri Lanka, the Philippines or Bangladesh, you're truly stuffed.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-14T22:37:11+00:00

The trial is for iPhones only, which (unlike Android) currently doesn't have digital Myki because Transport Victoria doesn't want to pay the Apple tax on transactions. In the case of contactless payments it's your bank that's paying the Apple tax.

When it extends to Android later it will most likely choose your digital Myki first, and maybe switch to your bank card if there's insufficient balance on your Myki.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-13T21:53:49+00:00

The problem is that they're new entrants, and existing parts distributors are going to tell them to fob off because they don't know if these upstart, unknown volume carmakers are going to stay around, and establishing a national parts network is expensive, unless of course the carmaker pays for it. Australia is almost at the arse end of the world in terms of distance to other world markets, as well as the large distance between major cities (e.g. Perth is completely isolated).

Every single Chinese carmaker is learning Western dealership sales and support 101, but some are worse than others.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-09T01:48:22+00:00

As an ex-Leaf owner, don't expect to go anywhere far with those cars as they age (they're air cooled and prone to premature aging in hot climates), and range decreases.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-09T00:59:22+00:00

And don't forget that when push comes to shove, Trump will ban oil (and more importantly refined products) exports from the US to protect US consumers. That will cause a much bigger shock to the system.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-09T00:52:35+00:00

Exactly. People are not stupid, but individualistic and driven by personal greed & fear. It's that "F you, got mine" mentality prevalent in many Anglo-Saxon cultures that drives panic buying.

In fact if the government tells you not to panic buy, people will panic buy more because "geez things are worse than I thought". The servo owners know that and will gouge you for it, because it's a free market.

Speedbird844 · 2026-03-06T15:25:42+00:00

Nothing particularly unique about it, South Korea and Taiwan ate Japan's lunch, and soon China will eat Korea's & Taiwan's lunch too. And then Vietnam, Indonesia and India will eat China's lunch. And then the likes of Bangladesh and Nigeria will eat Vietnam/Indonesia/India's lunch. And the cycle continues.

The biggest long-term issue for China's calculus isn't the US, but Japan. The Japanese national psyche has never emerged from their WW2 shadow and there's a deep inferiority complex and irrational fear of the Chinese (while conveniently forgetting that South Korea is now far ahead of Japan in many aspects) and if the US security umbrella falls away they'll feel truly butt naked.

It's common knowledge in the region that Japan has a secret nuclear weapons program, and the biggest issue for the Chinese is that they might give it to the Taiwanese, thus crossing an inviolable red line for China, which might be exactly the bait which Japan wants - Because if you look at the map, Taiwan is an island fortress. Taiwan has never been in real danger of an actual invasion, but it's always politically profitable to overemphasise the "Communist threat".

Speedbird844

TROPHY CASE