Article at Brisbane Institute: What is a Fair Fare?

[ozbob]

What is a Fair Fare?

Interesting article click --> here!

[#Metro]

We need to change our own and our politicians' mentality about how, and how much we pay for different forms of transport including roads, footpaths, bikeways, buses, trains, ferries and taxis. Better public transport, however, will not eventuate simply from the provision of more money, derived either from subsidy or fares.

This is true to a degree. But you get what you pay for.
If you want cheap or free transport, don't be surprised if you get an el cheapo service with low frequency.

Secondly, it is all too easy to simply ask for more and more money without thinking up ideas that could be powerfully effective and almost free/low cost.

Ideas such as:
109 + 66 merging the two
Better planning of cities; reigning in sprawl
Pulse railway timetables in the off peak
Bus lanes, bus priority
More frequent services in the off peak
Through-routing of bus services (cultural centre terminators especially need looking at)
Taking dispersed bus services in a suburb and bundling them by having them run in a common corridor

[johnnigh]

I don't know what your points are tramtrain...
David Bremner isn't arguing for cheap fares, he's just saying what RBOT has been saying for the past few years, that Translink has to be more responsive to passenger needs. In fact, his article could have been filched straight from Bob's press releases!

It's good to see the article appearing in the Brisbane Institute's online mag. BTW, Rachel Nolan is a member of the BI's board.

However, on some of your list of points, TT, the elephant in the room is road pricing. Until motorists have to pay for the costs they impose on other motorists (congestion: my car has a sticker saying: 'cars hold up traffic') as well as for wear and tear on roads, the motorist will be getting the roads for less than the taxpayer has to cough up. Current rego fees, petrol tax etc doesn't come near to what we pay for roads. And only last week, both Rachel and Anna could barely contain themselves in categorically denying that they would ever introduce road pricing of any kind. It's a political hot potato, but imagine if groceries were free except for a registration fee and trolley tax while the taxpayer paid the rest!!    It's the same idea as free roads...

[#Metro]

Look I agree. If only we could see a table, clear and simple comparing all the costs (revealed and hidden) then it would make the discussion so much simpler.

However, when you consider that people do and enjoy all sort of things that cause some degree of harm to themselves and others, one realises that desire and preference and not just price come into the equation.
The cheapest car costs at least a whole year's worth of Translink Tickets. But people don't drive the cheap ones, they want the 4-wheel drive or the really expensive one.

So I ask:

1. how high does a road price have to be to get 80% of people to catch public transport (Johnno's discussed target)?

2. And would such a government exist after it enacted such a law?

The second point is that there already is creeping road pricing being introduced. The BCC and QLD Gov seemed to have stopped building free roads in Brisbane: almost all road projects in Brisbane have been done with a private partner which imposes a toll that is greater or equal to a Translink 1 or 2 zone fare. And these projects are in some of the busiest areas...

Taking your points into consideration, perhaps the writer of the article should have called it "what toll is a fair toll".

[#Metro]

I don't know what your points are tramtrain...

From our friends at the PTUA
http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/techno.shtml

The city of Zurich has some of the most successful public transport in the world. Yet it has no Maglev, no O-Bahn, no monorails and no ultra-high-speed trains. This is not for want of trying by the city engineers: in 1962 they floated a proposal to put the main tram lines underground and replace the rest with 'space age' buses; in 1973 there was a similar proposal for a new metro system, not unlike the BART which dates from the same period. As both proposals were defeated by referendum, this required the planners to find another way to make trams run efficiently in city streets. Their solution was to systematically remove all impediments to the movement of trams, through such mundane measures as adjusting traffic light sequences, installing concrete kerbs between tram and car lanes, and declaring turn bans at certain intersections. The measures were so successful that they are now employed in a large number of European cities.

Another Swiss invention is the 'pulse timetable', where inter-city trains converge on a single location five minutes before the hour and depart for other locations at five minutes past the hour, allowing anyone to transfer from any service to any other in just ten minutes. No fancy technology is required, just a few planners with a brain between them.

Bundling services, pulse timetable, merged 66 + 109, making cultural centre buses cross town, spray painted bus lanes down major roads, feeder buses, clock-face timetable ...

[Jon Bryant]

Price alone will not let us reach the % we require (60-70% active and public transport).  It also has to include restriction in the supply of available road space and car parking spaces.  If we keep building capacity in our roads and car parking spaces too cater for 100% of trips then only unrealistic or politically undeliverable prices will make people chnage modes.  The key is to plan and delivring a service capable of moving the high percentages outlined above whilst restricting available road space/car parking spaces for single passenger cars (and not over penalise comerical and freight vehicle who have to be on the road).

This unfortnately will take a concious decision by government to give priority to people, bikes and public transport before cars.  A big chnage but a necessary one.