Despite living less than 100metres from a bus stop, a 96-year-old Mount Keira woman walks more than three kilometres to another stop to catch the bus into town.
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At least this is what her Opal card statement says.
The senior citizen’s Opal statement was sent to the Mercury by her son, who wanted to remain anonymous.
He said his mother caught the Premier No39 bus at Mount Keira Road and Allen Street – less than 100 metres from her home – to go into town.
But at least twice on her activity statement it says she caught that bus from Westfield Figtree – which is more than three kilometres from her house.
Another listing claims she caught the bus at a stop 1.7kilometres from her home to head into town.
Her son believes the problem lies with the Opal readers’ on-board GPS systems.
This follows on from an Illawarra bus driver’s claims that there were black spots in the GPS system, where the advice was to keep driving because the GPS ‘‘might catch up’’ and reactivate the reader.
The son suggested the reader had frozen around Westfield Figtree and not reactivated when his mother caught the bus from her usual stop.
‘‘I think what’s happening is there is definitely a problem in the system relating to the GPS.’’
‘‘I spoke to one of the drivers and he said the unit that contains the GPS on the bus, they just freeze,’’ he said.
‘‘They’ll work for a while and then get into an area and they’ll freeze and then they won’t start up again until they get to somewhere else.’’
He also said his mother appeared to be getting undercharged, by being debited for a trip into Wollongong but not charged on the return trip - even though the times on the bill show it was outside the Opal one-hour transfer window.
A Transport for NSW said there were a range of scenarios that could have caused the problems, none of which would be related to the Opal reader.
A spokesman said a likely reason for the lack of charges on return trips was that they were transfers made within the standard time of an hour, which means both trips are combined into a single fare.
The spokesman did not make any comment on whether there had been any reported issues with the GPS system on Opal readers.