Consumer Review: Melbourne Eastlink toll system, impossibly stupid.

The occasional h1bpositive blog visitor might recall the fine Winter's day out Matthew, Jamie and I had on the motorbikes back in June. After riding to Noojee, we came home via the much lauded Eastlink, Melbourne's new tollway, hailed as the poster-boy of public-private infrastructure funding.

We'd each organised our pre-paid tollway passes to travel on Eastlink, a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare as the rules and processes for motorcycles and cars vary considerably, and the Eastlink/Breeze web page would count among the worst possible User Interface designs ever created.


I eventually bought 4 passes over the phone (figuring we'd ride again out that way sometime soon), and had the foresight to email myself with the order details, just in case something went awry in future. Call it intuition, or call it twenty plus years working with computers and customers for a living.

To my amazement, in September, I got an overdue notice for riding on Eastlink without a pass. One trip, 12:32pm on June 20, 2009. Clocked riding into the Melba Tunnel in an unauthorised fashion. Outstanding Debt:

Toll charge $1.04
Invoice fee $8.45
Lookup fee $1.40
GST $1.08
TOTAL $11.97

I rang Breeze to seek an explanation. Now - quick caveat to my rant here - the lady I spoke to was sensational with her service, but, she's working for bozos. $2.5b bozos. First I had to quote the 12 digit invoice number - not the reminder notice 12 digit number, but the original invoice number buried in fine print of the letter on page 1. Man, these guys are planning for the future - no Y2k-like character limit for their invoice numbers. Not real easy to communicate over the telephone however.


That number, along with my registration plate, motorcycle type and colour, enabled her to see the infringement notice. Then, she logged into a second screen that enabled her to see if that license plate number had any purchases registered against it. Tick, tick, tick, one moment please caller, tick, tick... and yes ... there they are, 4 passes purchased on 19 June.

So... the 'computer' could see my registration plate had 4 passes credited against it, and the computer could see that I had made a trip on 20 June, but somehow the computer had recorded that at 12:32 on 20 June, the mighty Gixxer was without passes on the tollway. The pass ordering computer and the traffic tracking computer seem to be different computers.

I guess that could happen - the road construction consortium would have outsourced vehicle tracking, invoicing and administration to the lowest bidders, as they all do nowadays. There might have been a momentary glitch in 'the computer' as the Gixxer roared by? So maybe it's actually 3 computers? One on the road, one for ordering, and one for billing? Or 4? Road, ordering, billing, infringing? Or 5? Road, order, bill, infringe and reconcile?

As an IT professional, my mind boggles as to how these things happen, and it's an embarrassment to the profession. So, who are the chumps who put together this computer system, and how much did it cost? Perhaps they did it on the cheap?

The billing infrastructure was part of a much trumpeted $2.5b (yep, billion) traffic management system for this tollway. The winning bidder was Traffic Management Systems - a listed rollup of various Australian traffic signage and control systems companies, which is listed under the TTI stock code.

TTI's publicly stated turnover has only been in the range of $57m - $95m, stating turnover of $57m in the year the tollway system was built (they only had 6 months to bill between the contract being let in November 2005 and end of financial year in June 2006), then $81.5m in 2007, and $95m in 2008 when the roadway finally opened. Thus they clearly didn't get all of the $2.5 billion. I'm going to guess a mere $100m for the computer system over the 2+ years.

A $100m computer system then. Reckon they would only give that contract to a really proven and solid software development company, that had a track record and long term profitability. So let's check out TTI's track record of success during Australia's largest infrastructure boom from 1998 to today:

WTF? Peaking at $46 at the end of 1999, these guys are an unprofitable penny dreadful trading at not more than a few cents a share for years on end. Have been since a year before they got the Eastlink contract. At 6c a share, I could own the whole damn company with the money I'm paying in bogus $11.97 tollway fines.

Chances of them having the smartest IT people to make that system work? Not good.

Customer Service have promised to get back to me with how this all happened. I won't hold my breath, as without doubt that's yet another computer system they were recording my complaint details into when I rang.

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13.10.2009 Result!