Article: Keep it simple, says transport fares adviser

[colinw]

The Sydney Morning Herald -> click here

THE head of transport ticketing in London, whose system Sydney is trying to copy, says the NSW government should radically simplify fare structures for public transport by the time the city gets a T-Card.

How much commuters will be charged to use public transport under the T-Card system, due to be trialled from the end of next year, remains a mystery.

But Shashi Verma, the director of fares and ticketing at Transport for London, says commuters should not have to deal with fares more complicated than London's, where bus journeys all cost the same and where train journeys are broken into zones backed by a cap.
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''The fare structure in Sydney is definitely in need of simplification,'' said Mr Verma, who has advised the NSW transport bureaucracy on what sort of T-Card system it should introduce.

''The system will deliver you any fare structure you want, but it is insane to have a fare structure that complicated because you are putting a lot of risk in the technology in implementing a fare change every single time.

''But more than that, if your customers don't understand what these rules are, what is the point of having this fare structure?''

Mr Verma has been offering advice to the Public Transport Ticketing Corporation after the previous government scrapped its disastrous initial ticketing project and handed a new contract to Cubic, a transport and defence contractor.

Mr Verma said he had advised the PTTC to go with Cubic, which delivered London its successful Oyster Card.

In London, bus commuters are charged £1.30 ($1.95) a trip, up to a daily cap of £4. The cost of a rail journey is broken into zones but there is also an upper limit.

''That is complexity enough,'' Mr Verma said. ''That is about the limit on what you can get.''

The MyZone reforms last year simplified Sydney's bus fares into three section-based prices, though commuters can still find it difficult to determine how many sections they will travel in the one journey.

There are five fares for single train tickets and there are also pensioner tickets and MyMulti tickets enabling use on different modes of transport.

The government recently brought light rail fares into the MyMulti system.

But it remains unclear what sort of fares the PTTC will implement for the T-Card.

Under former chief executive Elizabeth Zealand, the PTTC was said to have favoured a distance-based system that would charge commuters depending on the kilometres they travelled.

Mr Verma said he advised the PTTC to go with Cubic ahead of other companies offering more adventurous T-Card models. ''The most important thing for them to do is to re-establish their credibility and show that they can make this technology work,'' he said.

He said he had been happy to help Cubic win Sydney's $1.2 billion ticketing contract provided it gave NSW a good deal.

''Cubic has very often in the past been a difficult partner for many public sector agencies. But their behaviour in the past two years with us has been very different,'' he said.

[somebody]

Sounds like the London system is similar to Sydney, with a lack of integration and different prices for different modes.

You don't want anywhere near that level of complication.  That's one thing good about the go card structure.

[Fares_Fair]

Sounds like the London system is similar to Sydney, with a lack of integration and different prices for different modes.

You don't want anywhere near that level of complication.  That's one thing good about the go card structure.

and also the one bad thing about it ... it's inflexible.

Regards,
Fares_fair.

[somebody]

Do you complain about the "inflexibility" of the Coles checkout prices???  Or drivers licence fees, council rates, etc?

[Stillwater]

Coles has a link in to fly-buy and loyalty cards and offers rewards for bulk shoppers, in the form of two for the price of one, or three for the price of two products.  And I get a discount if I pay my rates 'up front' -- very similar to the way a periodic ticket works.

[somebody]

Coles has a link in to fly-buy and loyalty cards and offers rewards for bulk shoppers, in the form of two for the price of one, or three for the price of two products.  And I get a discount if I pay my rates 'up front' -- very similar to the way a periodic ticket works.

I would counter with "go card" has the Frequent User.

Besides, how much does paying your rates up front save?  In Sydney it may have been zero.  Fly Buys and other loyalty schemes deliver very little benefit.

[Fares_Fair]

Coles has a link in to fly-buy and loyalty cards and offers rewards for bulk shoppers, in the form of two for the price of one, or three for the price of two products.  And I get a discount if I pay my rates 'up front' -- very similar to the way a periodic ticket works.

I would counter with "go card" has the Frequent User.

Besides, how much does paying your rates up front save?  In Sydney it may have been zero.  Fly Buys and other loyalty schemes deliver very little benefit.

After swallowing bait ...

Respectfully Simon, not the best of counters (and you have come back with some good one's previously).  

That's right, it's inflexible - that is all it can do !
Not the smartest of smart cards, wouldn't you agree ?

and we (Sunshine Coast) get 10% discount for early rates payment.

Regards,
Fares_Fair.

[Fares_Fair]

I'm off to catch my brand spanking new train home .. have a good night all.

Regards,
Fares_Fair.

[somebody]

It's a point not worth thinking about.

[ozbob]

I get 5% discount up front for BCC rates, and $30 on a $300 ICC rate bill.  That is just smart thinking by councils to generate cash flow, they win, the rate payer wins.  

[SurfRail]

In fairness, rates discounts are probably calculated to sacrifice some council revenue in the hope of not losing more through non-payment, enforcement and recovery, which is comparable to not having conductors anymore (costs more saving the revenue than is lost without them).

BCC rates discount is generally only $15.00 per account per quarter, so it varies a bit.  (Then again, BCC rates are very cheap because 70% of the rateable value of the city is commercial, which means all us long-distance commuters who don't consume significant levels of BCC services are helping to prop up the Bris Vegas' residential affordability .)

[somebody]

That's right, it's inflexible - that is all it can do !

Who cares?

I for one would hate to have to put up with a Sydney style fare structure.  Melbourne is pretty weak also, because it doesn't include Geelong/Bendigo/Ballarat/Seymour/Traralgon. Perth is a bit better.

[Fares_Fair]

That's right, it's inflexible - that is all it can do !

Who cares?

I for one would hate to have to put up with a Sydney style fare structure.  Melbourne is pretty weak also, because it doesn't include Geelong/Bendigo/Ballarat/Seymour/Traralgon. Perth is a bit better.

I do.

Regards,
Fares_Fair.

[somebody]

Admit it, the only reason you care is because you want a cheaper ticket!

[Fares_Fair]

No, the people I represent want a cheaper ticket !
They contribute with their taxes and deserve it IMHO.

If you want to pay more that's good.

Regards,
Fares_Fair.

[Gazza]

No, the people I represent want a cheaper ticket !
They contribute with their taxes and deserve it IMHO.

Well, tell the people you represent that there are people, who also pay taxes, who want a viable public transport service to begin with, and that includes people on the sunshine coast since the bus/train service provided there is mostly crappy.

Lets put this in real terms.
Lets say we give in to the people that want to save themselves money, and everyone we give everyone a discount of 40c per trip.

-39.3 Million trips last quarter.

-Times by four makes 157.2 million over a year

-Equals $62.8 Million a year foregone.

According to this page: http://www.busnews.com.au/news/articleid/73260.aspx The Cityglider high frequency bus is $5 Mil year to run.

So we could do 12 high frequency routes from scratch, or say convert a maximum 24 half hourly routes to 15 minute routes.

Other options...

Cityglider is 7.8km long (And to be fair, some other BUZ routes, excluding the obviously long ones like the 444 are all round about 10km give or take). Im assuming that is a reasonably constant 'cost per kilometer' to provide a high frequency bus service of the same operating hours (In other words, if Cityglider was 15.6km long, it would cost $10 Mil to run per year to run.

The Great Circle line is 70km long (and would be less if the Mt Cootha section was fixed) , so we could pay to shatter the line and BUZ it (Cost of $44 mil by my calculations), redeploy all existing route kilometres, and still have $18 million left over.

Another option...Bobs orange station feeders   . I had a look at his diagram for the one around Oxley, and got 10km worth, and it basically serves 3 stations, so we could easily do entire lines with this sort of money.

Rough calculations anyway, it could well be cheaper to run a BUZ in the outer suburbs compared to the large amount of stop starting the Cityglider has to do along its route.


But see Faresfair and others, this is why I think its p%ssing up money to send fares backwards, because we could pay for a lot of good service with the same money.

[somebody]

They contribute with their taxes and deserve it IMHO.

Err, no.

They may contribute with their taxes, but are you arguing that they don't have some of the most subsidised services (with the Gold Coast) in SEQ?

[SurfRail]

But see Faresfair and others, this is why I think its p%ssing up money to send fares backwards, because we could pay for a lot of good service with the same money.

Service improvements aren't paid for with fare revenue at 26% recovery.  The services need to be stimulated first, out of consolidated revenue, and then off-set with revenue from increased patronage.

Of course, TransLink's utterly inept planning, top heavy organisational structure and lack of willingness to pursue world's best practice efficiencies make it much easier to rationalise the ridiculously high fares we are paying for crap services levels everywhere in SEQ, so long as you ignore the elephant in the room (ie that we have TransLink running things, not TfL, the ZVV or PTA-WA who would actually put the revenue to good use).

[Gazza]

^I'm more looking at it from the mindset that they would have already budgeted for a certain amount of revenue this year and so on, so fare cuts would erode that.