after giving great kudos to the new train service to mandurah, i have to say that after transperth managed to complete such a monumental project and provide a service that feels quite slick and excellent, it completely baffles me that their website can be so totally inadequate.
they must be running the slowest servers in the history of the web, which just seems amazing to me for a company that would probably be very interested in people using self-serve to figure out routes and times of services. but, if you go to their site (www.transperth.wa.gov.au), you will encounter up to 60 seconds+ delays on basic enquiries… it is so frustrating, and i just can’t imagine that they don’t know about it.
whacking in some new servers and beefing this up would be both cheap and quick to do with current tech, so just can’t understand why it hasn’t been done already. they build a multi-million dollar piece of infrastructure and then can’t spend a miniscule amount on the human interface?! i’ve noted that the ticketing machines have also been out of order on a couple of the trips we’ve taken so far, so i guess maybe there’s bigger computer problems afoot…
having once served transperth as a consultant way back in the day, i happen to have some insider memories of the chaos that reigns behind the scenes… :-)