Tram Delay Dispatch: A Myki Story Nobody Asked For Tram Delay Dispatch: A Myki Story Nobody Asked For Tram Delay Dispatch: A Myki Story Nobody Asked For

7:43am, Thursday. The 86 to Bundoora.

I'm standing on a tram platform. The PTV app says "Service operating to timetable." Sure mate. The timetable is a work of fiction. A collective delusion we've all agreed to participate in. Like Santa. But worse. Santa doesn't make you late for work. Santa doesn't leave you in the rain at 7am on a Thursday. Santa has standards.

The Myki Situation

Let's get one thing straight. The Myki card is a $1.5 billion monument to bureaucratic failure. You tap on. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you get the dreaded beep-beep-beep of rejection. Sometimes the reader is just dead—a black screen, a small funeral for your morning. I've seen it. I've lived it. I've stood there like a fool, tapping a dead reader, while the tram doors close and the driver gives me a look. The look says: I've seen this before. I'll see it again. I am tired. We are all tired.

I don't have data for these numbers. I have vibes. The vibes are strong. The vibes have been collecting since 2012. Don't @ me.

What Actually Happened This Morning

1. 07:41 — Arrive at stop. Three people already waiting. We exchange the nod. The nod says: we are in this together and also I will not make eye contact. The nod is sacred. The nod is all we have.

2. 07:47 — Tram arrives. Four minutes late. Nobody comments. We have accepted our fate. We have accepted many things. This is just one more. We are resilient. We are Melburnians. We carry jackets we don't need. We wait for trams that don't come. We persist.

3. 07:48 — The doors open. A wave of warm air. Someone's breakfast is in a paper bag. It smells like sausage. I am not hungry. I am angry that I'm hungry. The tram has betrayed me. The tram has made me want a sausage. I did not want a sausage before the tram. The tram has changed me.

4. 07:52 — We stop between Nicholson and Brunswick Street. No announcement. The driver gets on the radio. We sit. We sit. A man in a suit sighs. The sigh travels through the carriage like a contagion. We all sigh. We are one. We are tired. We are going to be late.

The tram is not late. You are early for your own suffering.

Someone should put that on a t-shirt. I'd buy it. I'd wear it. I'd wear it on the tram. The tram would not care. The tram has never cared.

The Verdict

Yarra Trams will tell you they're doing their best. The state government will tell you infrastructure takes time. I'm telling you: sometimes the 86 is just vibes. And the vibes are off. The vibes have been off since before I moved here. My nan said the trams were better in her day. She might have been right. She was right about most things. The knees. The weather. The scones. Maybe the trams too.

If you caught the tram today, you know. If you didn't—lucky you. The next one's in twelve minutes. Or twenty. Or who the fuck knows. The PTV app doesn't know. The driver doesn't know. God doesn't know. We're all just guessing. We're all just hoping. We're all just standing in the rain with our Myki cards and our dreams and our sausage-smelling carriage and our collective exhaustion.

Welcome to Melbourne. The coffee's good. The trams are a mystery. We persist anyway.