What's wrong with distance-based pricing?
It doesn't sound all that bad, but mobility is one of the key factors in mental health, physical health, as well as social and economic wealth. Putting a price on the number of kilometres we travel will hit many of us a lot harder than you'd think.
t-card plot thickens...as if it could get any stupider...
From the Sydney Morning Herald
Dumb card: relic bus ticket system for Sydney
Linton Besser Transport Reporter
February 19, 2008
EXCLUSIVE
IT HAS come to this: the State Government will buy the relics of Brisbane's obsolete ticketing system after ending an eight-year dream of a transport smartcard.
As Brisbane joins Perth and moves to its own Tcard, Translink, Brisbane's transport authority, has confirmed the NSW Government is trying to obtain 300 of Brisbane's 15-year-old magnetic stripe machines to bolster Sydney's ageing system.
The purchase - a month after the Transport Minister, John Watkins, terminated the Government's contract with the Tcard developer, ERG Limited - shows the Government is trying to patch together a ticketing system that is in tatters.
Thousands of public and private buses are using obsolete ticket machines which need to be replaced.
And rail commuters continue to face long queues at CityRail stations partly because its ticket machines often break down.
In the month to last Wednesday, there were 691 recorded breakdowns of the 460 ticket machines across the network.
CityRail says it is trying to reduce ticket queues, including using roving ticket sellers, but an overhaul of magnetic stripe ticketing systems has been put off for almost a decade in the hope the Tcard would make it redundant.
The decision to axe ERG sent its share price down. ERG remains in a trading halt with shares at 4.5 cents.
But now the State Government has to renegotiate with the Perth company an expired maintenance contract for about 4000 ageing bus ticket machines, which use ERG technology from 1993.
ERG's director of operations, Steve Gallagher, said they had a steadily worsening failure rate. "[That] ticketing equipment is well past its design life," he said. "It is two generations old."
State Transit may need to contract ERG staff to integrate the 300 Brisbane machines so that they fit Sydney's buses.
Taxpayers could be forced to subsidise private buses if old ticketing machines fail to properly record fares.
A Ministry of Transport spokeswoman, Chrissy Flanagan, said the bus operators' contracts with the ministry would allow them to claim losses from revenue leakage.
She added that this was because ERG failed to deliver the new ticketing system on time, but a some of the delay was the Government's fault.
The Bus and Coach Association estimates that a third of the 2500 private buses that service Sydney use ticket machines that are obsolete and that have been cannibalised to keep them going.
Half the fleet report difficulties servicing ageing but not yet obsolete equipment, and the association says the entire industry will need a replacement system within 18 months.
Its executive director, Darryl Mellish, said the industry needed "urgent action from the Government to enable an interim solution to be arrived at in months and not years".
"Private operators have been anxiously awaiting a new ticketing system to be able to offer multiple ride discounts and cashless buses to their passengers," he said. "Now it is again up in the air."
The acting chief executive of State Transit, Peter Rowley, said services were running as normal as the Tcard readers and consoles were removed and replaced with the older magnetic stripe machines.
"State Transit's ticket validation system consistently performs at higher than 99 per cent availability," he said.
"However, there are 15,000 scheduled services a day carrying 600,000 passengers, and with these kind of numbers, the odd machine fault is to be expected."
Russell Mahoney, a spokesman for Mr Watkins, said the immediate issues of ageing equipment and the school Tcard were among matters being addressed by an "expert panel".
"The Government has convened an expert panel to determine the short-, medium- and long-term future of electronic ticketing in Sydney," Mr Mahoney said.
"They'll look at what can be taken from the existing project, and how the Government can move forward in choosing a new integrated ticketing system for Sydney."
A world class city?
Apparently STA has been swapping buses in and out of Kingsgrove Depot whilst the trial Tcard ticketing machines are being removed. Reports indicate a lot of paper destination signs are being seen on buses working Kingsgrove runs which cannot show their local destination signs.
Also reported are some Newcastle buses on loan to Waverly Depot and apparently a couple of drivers have realised they can use the Newcastle destination sign “The Junction” when travelling towards Bondi Junction.
A world class city. Yeah!
G.
Outdated Technology not the answer either...
Instead of relying on outdated technology ("Dumb card: relic bus ticket system for Sydney", SMH, Feb 18), why doesn't the NSW Government implement a transport smartcard system similar to those in Hong Kong, where the Octopus card has been a great success, or Perth? Of course, that would mean simplifying Sydney's fares (either via zones or via distance-based pricing), a process that may take a bit of effort and imagination, qualities sadly lacking in this visionless government.
J.
Good Call but one point needs to be made...
J., I think thats just the ticket. You could add an ironic twist by pointing out that the distance based pricing would be a little unfair...
LM
Unfair?
Is distance based pricing unfair? plse explain ......
J.
Not unfair per se...
I don’t think distance based fares per se are a problem, rather:
(a) how complex they are to calculate by Tcard, and
(b) how to avoid hitting commuters with multiple flagfalls when they change modes … … now THAT is unfair!
G.
Absolutely Unfair...
Imagine that you live in the Blue Mountains and have to pay much more than everyone else to get into the city. Imagine now that you live in the state of NSW where services are being consolidated in urban centres. Imagine how imaginative we would have to get, and how densely we would be living, if we attempted to put all the people where they could get access to these centralised services without subsidies for transport. Think hard about who it is that lives on the edges and how affordable it will be when they pay per kilometer to access hospitals, mental health services in sunny Concord, or work on the other side of the city.
Essentially I see the opposing paradigms as being centralisation and subsidised transport or decentralisation of essential services (much more expensive but better for everyone...which is why it won't happen) and unsubsidised transport.
To hit people living in the west with a pay per kilometre deal accompanied, as far as I am aware, by a mode change fee everytime they swap modes is enormously problematic.
This is why I believe that they are reluctant to change the fare structures at this point. They want to go to distance based charging once everyone is used to not seeing the money they are forking out in their hot little hands.
It will be less problematic when the transaction happens electronically, and price hikes will be similarly distanced once they are coming out of an electronic card.
Honestly, the money I spend on photocopying because I have to charge a card rather than making a decision with every coin about whether I really need this or that page. It does make a difference, as anyone involved with fundraising for NGO's will tell you. Direct Debit from a credit card has revitalised the ability of these groups to operate at a high level.
LM
An example
Just to point out - currently I can get anywhere I need to go on $17 bucks a week with my Travel Pass. If I bought a travel ten instead, I wouldn't get anywhere near as much use out of it. I would not even make it to school every day. Distance based fares will put limits on mobility, and mobility has huge health and welfare implications. I want people to be able to travel. It's important.
Travel Passes are zone-based periodical tickets - they attract a discount for the extensive use that people make of the transport system. It's like a kind of loyalty scheme. You only have to know what day it is (or month or year) and how far you are allowed to travel. So much simpler than the Travel Tens and much more of an incentive to use the most efficient modes of transport. Distance-based pricing makes everything much more complicated and expensive.
LM
Petrol prices are going to hit before this is resolved...
I would oppose distanced-based pricing, or at least argue that there should not be a one-to-one relationship (I'm grasping for the right word here, but I think you know what I mean – the fares should rise at a MUCH slower rate than the distance.)
My reason is that there are very big social justice implications. Thanks to the politicians' and economists' infatuation with market fundamentalism and car-based cities we now have terrible urban sprawl. You've all seen those outer 'burbs with the three cars parked on the front lawn. Mum, dad and the kids all have one. Within months there's going to be hell to pay as they see their horizons and their disposable income shrink. I'm talking really bad social crisis. These people are going to need a vast increase in public transport really, really quickly or there will be trouble.
Does anybody know what the TOTAL annual cost of providing public transport in Sydney? The point is, within a couple of years we're not going to "need" an RTA. Their work can be replaced by a small road-repair branch of public works.
In fact we ought to be considering a whole bunch of free PT zones.
FM G.
sliding scale?
FM G. said:
"...at least argue that there should not be a one-to-one relationship (I'm grasping for the right word here, but I think you know what I mean – the fares should rise at a MUCH slower rate than the distance.)"
I think you mean a ‘sliding scale’.
G.