Opposition Media Release: Lack of go card outlets penalises commuters

[ozbob]

Lack of go card outlets penalises commuters

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

A LACK of go card retail outlets in South East Queensland will penalise those commuters who can least afford the higher paper ticket fares from January next year, the State Opposition said today.

Shadow Minister for Transport Fiona Simpson said Bligh Government plans to penalise paper ticket users with 40 per cent fare rises in favour of go card users was a folly given the lack of retail outlets.

Ms Simpson called on the commuting public to tell their stories about how hard it was to get hold of a go card if you wanted to buy one in person.

?There are whole communities which have no or few retail outlets,? Ms Simpson said.

?It is shaping up as an unnecessary debacle.

?Transport Minister Rachel Nolan?s home city of Ipswich only has one go card retailer selling the card in Ipswich proper. Under her plans to ?double? the number of retailers, this would mean Ipswich residents could expect as few as two outlets. That?s hardly a brilliant increase in services.

?The Sunshine Coast has only 11 outlets and the Gold Coast only 21.

?Newsagents who have been crying out for the right to sell go cards, but have been knocked back

?This failure can be seen by the fact that in June only 30 per cent of public transport users used a go card. 

?Even a doubling of outlets will not be sufficiently service the 70 per cent of commuters with out a go card.

?I think Transport Minister Nolan and the Bligh Government are out of touch.  Commuters will use go card if they are easy, affordable and accessible. That hasn?t happened to date.?

http://www.fionasimpson.com.au/Pages/Article.aspx?ID=600

[#Metro]

Why can't you apply for these things online and have it posted to you? Even if it is temporarily like this.
There could be a postal fee (50c) to cover postage.

[Jon Bryant]

Tram Tram.  You can.  That is how I applied.

[ozbob]

Yes, that is how I obtained my first go card too Jon.  I wanted to test out the system (see --> http://backontrack.org/mbs/index.php?topic=486.0 ).

Ms Simpson makes a valid point.  There certainly needs to be a lot more distribution points for the go, and places for top up as well.  Us web enabled goers do fine, but many don't have regular web access.

The AVVMs being rolled out next year on the bus ways will help.   We have highlighted the lack of go card agents many times.  But now it will be critical.

I also suggested to Citytrains yesterday that onboard topup go card facilities would be very handy as well.

[#Metro]

Perhaps just for a once off. Put people at station entrances for three days, who, rather than sell paper tickets as they usually do, just sell preloaded go cards.

Simple and easy. Actually I thought they might have this idea already in the works-I mean how are they going to get those free gocards distributed?

[dwb]

I reckon barriers to people using go card need to effectively be removed before they start with hiking paper costs or removing paper altogether. Customers once bitten will be twice shy and switch if possible to other modes - not good for anybody!!

[#Metro]

I think I did propose somewhere that people should be able to trade in their monthly or whatever tickets they already have for the same value on their go card + maybe a bit extra to make them happy/keep the government off the gripes list.

[p858snake]

Would there be major issues if they opened it up so any shop that wanted it could obtain the services to do it for a small monthly/yearly fee? they could give them systems that could only active and top up cards if there was privacy issues with people looking up registered cards.

[Jon Bryant]

Most businesses would happily provide the service for free as they know it will bring in customers who might just buy a paper, milk, etc. etc.,