Ylliks

Just the other day my friend Graham wrote a post about his annoyance with the new OV-chipkaart which has been recently introduced in our little country. He makes some valid points about the somewhat lacking implementation of the system. It’s not the only governmental system that is isn’t working as well as it should.

Just to give you another example, last night I met up with a few friends in Eindhoven for dinner and a movie (Salt really isn’t good btw). As is custom in many city centers there’s paid parking. So after finding a space I trotted towards the ticket machine to find that I couldn’t use coins (there went my preparation of having enough spare change in my wallet) but only our debet card system called ChipKnip (Dutch link). Well, no worries there because mine is usually loaded up with some money. So I took out the card and got a ticket. But here’s the rub: there’s a maximum charge of 6,30 euros a day. This works when using coins, but not with using the ChipKnip. This meant for me that I only had to pay 40 cents more to cover my parking time, but imagine having to park there the entire day. I quickly calculated that would set you back an extra 18 euros (Disclaimer: I haven’t checked if it’s possible to claim back your money) if you had to use a ChipKnip.

You would think that a system that is used in so many cities and is mandatory for so many people to use would have things like this covered.

It’s problems like these that makes me dread the day that our Milage Tax is introduced where a system registers the amount of kilometers you drive in your car and then taxes you accordingly. The system isn’t even build yet but is planned for implementation in 2012. Let’s just hope they have it all figured out before they start with it, because otherwise you will have some 8 million angry drivers.