You have to love election time. It’s the time of year when politicians make promises about all the cool stuff they’ll do after they get elected, as opposed to actually doing it when they had the chance. To prove the point, the NSW Labor government yesterday promised free WiFi for Sydney trains should they get reelected next month.
While there have been some tech offerings from the current Labor government, like the ferry wifi and support for consumer-grade timetabling apps (among other things), the simple fact is that this reeks of desperation from a government who can taste their impending election loss. Given that they’ve been in power for 16 years or so, they’ve had plenty of time to get off their asses and offer these services prior to the lead up to an election.
State governments all over the country shouldn’t need the threat of losing an election as an excuse to start promising this kind of technology offering – it should be a priority already. But for Sydneysiders, hopefully we’ll see Wi-Fi connected trains no matter who wins the election next month…