Article: Train fares slashed at Airport Link stations

[colinw]

The Sydney Morning Herald: Train fares to fall at two stations

Train commuters from the AirportLink stations of Green Square and Mascot will have their fares reduced from Monday, Premier Kristina Keneally announced today.

The decision to subsidise a "station access fee" paid to the private owners of the line will save a commuter from Green Square to the city $17 a week. It will cost the government $4 million a year.

Ms Keneally said the government had decided against removing station access fees from the stations at the domestic and international airports.
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To do so – and bring fares to the airports in line with the rest of the City Rail network – would cost about $40 million a year.

The Premier said the expensive fares from the airport line were a legacy of the previous Coalition government.

She noted that, at that time, Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell was chief of staff to Bruce Baird, the Liberal transport minister who signed off on the private airport line.

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[Stillwater]

Nice one!   It is a stab in the back politically for the Opposition leader.  It would also seem that the government has taken a punt that the $4 million annual cost of this initiative is less that the government would have to pay had it been forrced to provide additional road-based capacity for Mascot and Green Square commuters disgrunted by the high train fares to their stations and willing to do something about it -- like use their car instead.  $4 million also likely to be less than the operating costs of buses to the same area.  A solution is always rapid when political and practical objectives coincide.  If only we could engineer that twin outcome in SEQ!

[colinw]

FWIW, I don't mind paying the surcharge for the airport service in Sydney, because the service is frequent and runs for sensible hours of operation ... it is always there when I need it and the longest I've had to wait for it was less than 10 minutes.  Consequently I have used the train on all but one trip to Sydney since the line opened, and that one trip where I did not was because a relative insisted on picking us up.

If Airtrain was frequent and ran from 5AM to midnight, I'd probably use it, but I refuse to pay a surcharge for a service that only intermittently meets my needs.  Thus in Brisbane I use taxis and stick it on the corporate AMEX for work trips, or for private trips one of our relatives just picks us up or drops us off (and we do the same for them).

[somebody]

Of course, what this is referring to is the service to the non-Airport stations on the Airport line.

If KK really wanted to do Sydney a favour she would make one of her last acts to buy back the line from the receiver.  This can easily be changed by an incoming opposition.  Actually, maybe that's the point.

[colinw]

The Sydney Morning Herald: Trains, movies set to enliven Green Square

Green Square ... billed as Australia's biggest urban renewal project

THE hype over Green Square - a band of suburbs 4.5 kilometres south-west of Sydney that has been billed as Australia's biggest urban renewal project - may finally be realised.

A movie chain revealed yesterday it would build a cinema there and the state government announced the local train stations would be cheaper to use.

The City of Sydney has lodged a submission with the federal government agency Infrastructure Australia for $85 million so it can acquire land for a mass transit corridor to the suburbs, dominated by cars.

The City supports a light rail line from Central Station to Zetland, Alexandria, Beaconsfield and Waterloo. The line would run via Devonshire, Crown and Baptist streets, then parallel to South Dowling Street, through residential developments.

The Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, who estimates the project will cost $300 million, wants to reserve the land as quickly as possible.

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