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2,131 faults in 19 months registered on ADT confidential log book leaked to MaltaToday
Karl Schembri
The Lm1.1 million “state of the art” bus ticketing system has had over 2,000 faults since it was installed in July 2003, a MaltaToday investigation can reveal.
Kept secret since day one of the new system, the staggering incidence of everyday faults, blipping vending machines, blown fuses, system breakdowns and obscure malfunctions are documented in a confidential log book kept by the Transport Authority (ADT), a copy of which was leaked to this newspaper.
Spanning over 19 months of operation, the hand-written log book exposes the bus ticketing system’s fault-prone technology, installed and maintained by Alberta Fire Detection and Alarm Systems, with daily system breakdowns, memory loss and systematic errors that are forcing many bus drivers to revert to the old manual ticket selling system.
At an average of more than four faults a day, 388 buses out of 500 have been affected by faults at least once, according to the documentation spanning from 17 November 2003 to 8 June 2005.
In almost every case out of the 2,131 registered, Alberta technicians were called to the Valletta terminus for repairs. Everyday faults include system memory loss, faulty printers and computer chips getting “stuck”, while other obscure entries in illegible handwriting clutter every sheet of the 77 pages long index compiled by semi-literate Transport Authority officers.
Equally overwhelming is the incidence of faults registered at automatic ticket selling machines and data depot readers, where drivers are meant to download their information gathered on their computer chips including sales figures and revenue: 164 machine faults were registered over one year, that is one case every two days.
With more than 100 faults monthly, the maintenance costs remain unclear, as the Transport Authority has so far declined to answer questions sent repeatedly by MaltaToday.
Admitting that the three-year tender agreement with Alberta covers only a limited number of faults per month, authority spokesperson Daniela Borg Mizzi limited herself to stating that “the maintenance contract which provides for a fixed number of monthly interventions formed part of the original tender for the supply of the bus ticketing machines”.
A spokesperson for Transport Minister Jesmond Mugliett said the ticketing system agreement with Alberta was the authority’s responsibility and the release of information was the authority’s prerogative.
Alberta’s project manager in charge of the system, Derek Broadley, refused to discuss faults figures and the maintenance agreement. Broadley is the same man who acted as a consultant to the Public Transport Authority in 1995 at the height of the bus ticketing scandal, employed at the government’s Management Systems Unit.
“Frankly, it’s none of your business,” he said yesterday. “These figures you’re quoting mean nothing to me. All I’ll tell you is that, at any one time, the system is operating at 99.8 per cent availability.”
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