Article: It's life in the slow lane as airport worker's long bus trip avoids hef

[ozbob]

From the Sydney Morning Herald click here!

It's life in the slow lane as airport worker's long bus trip avoids hefty fares

It's life in the slow lane as airport worker's long bus trip avoids hefty fares
June 8, 2013 Leesha McKenny

A car space at Sydney Airport doesn't serve coffees, make small talk, smile or offer directions.

But it still earns about as much as Amanda Hong Ning does, which is why the student catches the bus to her cafe job at Kingsford Smith's terminal three.

    If I park [at the airport], I have to give up my whole shift pay, basically.

''If I park here, I have to give up my whole shift pay, basically,'' she says.

Route 400 Bondi Junction to Burwood is the only public bus to the airport and a half-hourly reminder that not every airport monopoly attracts a surcharge.

At just over an hour in light traffic, the stop-start $4.60 trip from Bondi Junction took twice as long on Thursday as the $42 taxi fare and $16.70 train ride.

By comparison, a car space earned $24 in that same 61 minutes. At the terminal's valet parking, make that $44.

The airport's cheapest journey is also a circuitous one. Route 400 passed Randwick's Prince of Wales Hospital and the University of NSW, before travelling to Kingsford, Maroubra Junction, Eastgardens, Mascot, and finally rounding on the airport terminals on its way west.

But even the Macquarie Group-backed private airport, which collects $3.50 from every departing taxi as well as parking revenue, wants more passengers to consider public transport as their way to Kingsford Smith.

The airport's draft master plan, released this week, acknowledges the need to address its chronic road congestion, which a recent report said was already near capacity.

The plan argues more bus facilities and reconfigured roads will help it ''comfortably'' continue as Sydney's only airport beyond the next two decades, when passenger numbers are expected to double to 74 million by 2033.

The airport also wants the government to reduce the $12 station access fee it charges on airport fares along the privately operated rail line, something Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian has said is ''not current government policy''.

Ms Hong Ning said many workers who needed to catch the train still took the five-minute journey on Route 400 bus to Mascot Station, where a single ticket to Bondi Junction costs just $4.40. ''Then it's not the airport rate any more,'' she said.

It was a trick none seemed aware of down at the domestic train platform, where the $15.90 fare to the city was leaving more than the occasional backpacker looking aghast. Even then, however, price was relative.

''We come from Perth,'' said tourist Martin Napier. ''So this is cheap.''