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(10-23-2018, 01:24 PM)Canard Wrote: As a driver I’d much rather park in the outskirts and take transit downtown. I absolutely hate driving in cities and downtowns, and it’s nearly impossible to find parking. I’ve done this all my life in virtually every city I’ve ever visited. : shrug : YMMV. Just providing my two cents as others have.
So I certainly agree for some cities, I hate driving into Toronto, and will usually park and ride (or these days, transit all the way). I however have found KW to be especially car friendly, more even than similar cities like London, ON.
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It's a different case when you're a visitor to a city and don't know your way around- without knowing how easy it is to drive around, parking in a dedicated location and using transit into the centre might make a lot of sense. I prefer to do that, too- it's easier and I like transit and like experiencing other systems. But, for anyone who is familiar with KW, you're right that it is easy to get around, and parking is readily available almost everywhere.
It actually speaks to how car-dependent this region is that some residents might make the argument that parking is difficult to find, when really they just mean that the parking available is not free of charge.
If KW had any significant congestion, the case might be greater.
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I always assume that when "difficult", "parking", and "Downtown Kitchener" are used in the same sentence, the word "free" has been left out.
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(10-24-2018, 06:53 PM)panamaniac Wrote: I always assume that when "difficult", "parking", and "Downtown Kitchener" are used in the same sentence, the word "free" has been left out.
As well as "before 6pm" I believe (aren't a lot of city lots free after 6?).
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Yep. Most are free on weekends as well.
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PSA: If you're on the EasyGo beta and you use Auto Renew, make sure that its status is active on the website tool. Both myself and a fellow user found it shifted to 'dormant' and expected renewals did not go through; you need to reactivate it if that's the case.
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(11-01-2018, 12:42 PM)KevinL Wrote: PSA: If you're on the EasyGo beta and you use Auto Renew, make sure that its status is active on the website tool. Both myself and a fellow user found it shifted to 'dormant' and expected renewals did not go through; you need to reactivate it if that's the case.
Interesting. In regards to that though, in the past, what day did the autorenew occur? I was thinking of setting that up.
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11-01-2018, 01:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-01-2018, 01:26 PM by KevinL.)
It depends on the product you're renewing. For me it's monthly passes, so it goes through on a date late in the month; for the other user he has an automatic top-up set for when his balance dips below a certain value.
Upon further discussion on Twitter with the GRT team, it looks like mine was due to an unrelated credit-card issue, so my alarm may not have ben as urgent as I indicated.
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It would be monthly for me. Just didn't know if it went through on the 20th when new passes are typically available, or the last day of the month. (Or a day or two before)
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I hope they would do passes more than 48 hours before the end of the month, since they caution users that transactions may take that long to be reflected in a pass.
I think I've been really lucky in that I've never been bit by the delay. More than once I've added value after realizing on my morning commute to work that I was out and had it active on the card on my way home, but given that it's possible for fare boxes not to be updated when they're taken out for the day I'm hopeful someone chose to add a small layer of protection.
I also switched from value-adding to monthly pass with zero problems and can see that I still have value on my card. I don't trust myself to remember to turn off auto renewal in the spring when I switch back to biking so haven't experimented directly with it myself.
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My only concern is that the failed transactions that led to my autorenew going dormant wasn't indicated to me. They had my email, I could have addressed it if I had known.
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Yeah, notification would be good. These are all UX things which I have zero confidence in them getting right.
It would be nice if you could set the autorenew months. Or just a confirmation email.
It would also be nice if those with autorefill could just go down to zero, or negative, and be autorefilled when that happens. Being forced to carry a balance essentially increases the cost of owning the card.
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(11-01-2018, 09:45 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Yeah, notification would be good. These are all UX things which I have zero confidence in them getting right.
Yeah, the entire site feels like it was built by a developer who was given a halfway decent component library and a 30-page specification document and told to come back in 5 weeks. Which is my general impression of how eSolutions does work.
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(11-02-2018, 09:29 AM)robdrimmie Wrote: (11-01-2018, 09:45 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Yeah, notification would be good. These are all UX things which I have zero confidence in them getting right.
Yeah, the entire site feels like it was built by a developer who was given a halfway decent component library and a 30-page specification document and told to come back in 5 weeks. Which is my general impression of how eSolutions does work.
I didn't see the coding behind the site, so I don't want to express an opinion on that, but the biggest challenge I saw, and I see this on so many other sides, is the usability/user experience.
The art is pretty, etc., but when it comes to actually use it, it's almost completely broken. This is such a common problem too, from everything from websites to washing machines. Don Norman's book should be required reading for anyone building anything.
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