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Sydney Trains staff are being told to close down ticket gates for about four minutes when Opal card readers do not work, prompting alarm among some about overcrowding in peak periods.
A day after the NSW government confirmed it would not sell Opal cards directly at train stations, internal Sydney Trains documents obtained by Fairfax Media show how staff are being asked to handle malfunctions in the Opal system.
The government says technical problems have been rare for the Opal public transport smartcard, as it has been progressively extended to ferries, trains, and some buses.
But a directive sent to station duty managers at Sydney Trains this month shows the organisation is having to grapple with how to handle problems with the card during busy periods.
''Some Opal customers are experiencing errors when they use their card to tap on or tap off at gates,'' the directive says.
The email says that when one of three errors occur, staff are to manually reset the ticket gates that passengers walk through. This process takes about four minutes, the documents said.
In response, one station manager replied this would not work at busy times.
''As you know, yesterday all the gates on the main barrier where [sic] in yellow and if we close gates for 4mins it creates chaos,'' the manager wrote.
''The other issue is the gate is working for paper tickets why would we create delays for them and complaints for us ?? when this is OPAL’s problem.
''We either need more staff or a method to help Pax’s [passengers] with opal or opal will have to resolve the issue.''
Anecdotally, there appear to be a growing number of glitches in the Opal system, with bus passengers reporting multiple readers in error.
But a Transport for NSW spokesman said the introduction was progressing well and passengers had made more than 25 million journeys using Opal cards.
Separately, Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian said on Tuesday that commuters will eventually be able to top up their Opal cards at ticket machines, but would not say when – or if those machines would be at all or most stations.
Ms Berejiklian’s government confirmed this week that Opal cards would not be permanently sold from station counters.
Asked on Fairfax Radio on Tuesday morning if commuters would be able to top up their Opal cards from vending machines at train stations, Ms Berejiklian said: ''Oh look, potentially, absolutely. We're still obviously going through all that. We're in [a] transition phase.''
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