From the September PTUA Newsletter

Legislation establishing the Public Transport Development Authority was introduced to State Parliament on 14 September, and is expected to be debated this week.

On this vitally important policy initiative the government is proceeding broadly in the right direction. The structure and powers of the PTDA in this legislation largely mirror those of Vicroads. The PTDA will have its own Board, including one position reserved for a community representative.

That said, we are obviously keen that the PTDA’s enabling legislation should be as good as it can be, and viewed in this light there are some important shortcomings.

Both the PTDA and Vicroads are required to exercise their powers “subject to the Department [of Transport]‘s planning framework”. The precise meaning of this requirement, dating from the final year of the Brumby Government, is still being established. But a comparison of Vicroads’ actual functions with the new PTDA legislation indicates that Vicroads does still enjoy some wider powers.

In particular, existing legislation cites one of the functions of Vicroads as to “develop and implement operational policies and plans, including through legislation, regulations, standards, guidelines and practices, for the road system. . . “. But the new legislation makes clear that the responsibilities of the PTDA do not extend to development of legislation or regulations regarding public transport. Instead, its role is limited to providing advice to the Transport Department.

Another asymmetry that remains between Vicroads and the PTDA is that Vicroads is governed by a single CEO appointed by the “Governor in Council” –that is to say, the Cabinet — while the PTDA has a Board appointed by the Minister, and a CEO appointed by the Board with the Minister’s approval. This has its good and its bad aspects. The notion of an independent Board is one that we have championed, but is compromised by having Board appointments essentially in the gift of theMinister. Preferable to this would be a merit-based appointment process similar to that used federally for ABC and SBS board appointments.

The Department of Transport also retains the key responsibility of preparing the ‘Transport Plan’. This is the overarching plan which according to current legislation “must set the planning framework within which the transport bodies are to operate”. This makes sense if the plan merely sets a broad strategic framework, consistent with planner Vukan Vuchic’s concept of ‘strategic level’ planning. But what the legislation actually calls for are “priorities and actions” and “a short-term action plan that is regularly updated”.

Unfortunately, it appears a lot of power is being left in the hands of the bureaucracy, with the PTDA being less independent than many of its overseas equivalents. While it is important that transport authorities work within a ‘whole of government’ strategic framework, the scope for direct political control over public transport planning is still broader than necessary.

Aside from the question of the PTDA’s powers, the other main area we would want to see strengthened is that of transparency. The best transport authorities are those that publish their plans and deliberations, make data on system performance and timetables generally available, and allow the public to observe their meetings. These do not appear as requirements in the legislation, nor is there any obligation to publish the PTDA’s “statements of corporate intent”, which are the closest things the PTDA will have to formal ‘plans’. Matters of clear public interest, such as the Deloitte review of Myki, could still be kept secret under this legislation.

Community representation in the PTDA’s governance is also limited to the one community representative position on the Board. There is no separate community advisory committee (such as does exist in the case of Vicroads), or any provision for community input into decision-making processes, such as facilities for receiving public submissions.

Ultimately, however, it is the people as much as the formal structures that will determine how the PTDA plays out in practice. The challenge for inaugural CEO Ian Dobbs will be to ensure the PTDA disowns the culture of the ‘bad old PTC’—a concern frequently expressed by those who argued against an independent planning authority. We would recommend he look to his WA counterparts for a paradigm example of a competent authority in action.

The most significant policy commitment of the incoming Baillieu Government is the creation of a Public Transport Development Authority for Victoria. Getting this one right will make all the difference between Victoria having some of the best public transport in the world, and a continuation of the current mediocre, politically poisonous setup.

The good news is that Transport Minister Terry Mulder now has a wealth of interstate and overseas experience to draw on when constituting and recruiting the government’s PTDA. Zurich, Vancouver, London, Perth and to some extent Brisbane all provide good examples of what to do. While they embody a number of different specific organisational structures and relationships, they share common features that make them successful. For the benefit of PTUA members, we list these briefly here.

Full coordinating responsibility

A successful PTDA is a ‘one stop shop’ for system planning and operational coordination. Individual operators work under contract to the PTDA, with the PTDA being the single point of contact for the public and for other public authorities, including the Department of Transport. This contrasts with the current arrangement where over 100 entities share final responsibility for aspects of the system (see this diagram).

Statutory authority

The PTDA should be constituted as a statutory authority under an amended Transport Integration Act, with equivalent standing to Vicroads, and an independent board like that of Vicroads.

International expertise

Senior personnel must be recruited from the best network planning talent available internationally, not merely within Australia and not by redeploying local resources.

Community engagement

The PTDA board should conduct its meetings in public, the way a municipal council does. Following the example of Vancouver Translink, meetings should allocate a session where submissions can be received from the public.

Superseded bureaucracies

Planning functions currently vested in other entities such as the Transport Ticketing Authority, Metlink and the Director of Public Transport should be transferred to the PTDA, with the other entities reverting to service delivery and contract management agencies.

More details: www.ptua.org.au/campaigns/govern

This article is from the PTUA’s December 2010 newsletter. Please join to receive regular newsletters.

From PTUA’s December 2009 newsletter.

Despite having no Federal funds for its `Peninsula Link’, the State Government has announced its intention to proceed regardless, driving a motorway through precious native wildlife habitat and historic homesteads, in order to further entrench car dependence in south-east Melbourne and for visitors to the Peninsula.

With overall car traffic volumes static or falling in Melbourne since 2005, the road has little justification other than to fill the coffers of the EastLink consortium, who have been disappointed at traffic levels so far.

Meanwhile, virtually nothing is being done to remedy the hopeless situation for public transport in Frankston and on the Peninsula.

We might have hoped for some modest progress in the recent bus review of the region.

But despite acknowledging public demands both for increased service frequencies and for an east-west service between Mornington and Hastings, the review has recommended neither.

Instead, a couple more hourly bus services will be added, on the tacit assumption that public transport is a charity service for those who cannot drive cars, rather than an environmentally friendly alternative increasingly desired by those with cars.

For the over 50,000 residents of bayside towns from Safety Beach to Portsea—many on low to middle incomes—the backbone of the public transport system is the route 788 bus from Frankston to Portsea.

This runs at a hopeless 45 minute frequency on weekdays, and a scandalous 75 minute frequency on weekends, yet even so is regularly overcrowded.

If any of the thousands of regular visitors to the southern Peninsula were to attempt using public transport, this is the bus they would be dependent on.

Would any sane car owner choose public transport in this situation?

The push for the Peninsula Link together with the neglect of bus services is just one example of how the Victorian Transport Plan is working to increase the share of car travel at the expense of public transport.

We are keen to get in contact with PTUA members in this area to give this issue the prominence it requires.

Keen to help? Please contact the office.

• See also: Save The Pines: Frankston bypass and PenisulaLink freeway campaign news and discussion

UPDATE: As of 2012, some of the information below is outdated.
This page of Myki Questions and Answers has been updated, and is a good starting point to finding out how Myki will work

This article is from our September 2009 member newsletter. Join the PTUA to receive regular newsletters.

The Myki juggernaut rolls on, and the government are saying it will be switched on in Melbourne by the end of the year.

While the PTUA has consistently said the huge amount of money involved would have been better spent on staff, services, tram/train extensions and extra vehicles, we now face the likely prospect that the system will be fully implemented in the near future.

So, what does this mean for passengers? There will be three ways of using the Myki system.

Using Myki

The first is to ignore the re-usable plastic cards and buy only ‘short-term’ cardboard tickets each time you travel. These will be Daily or 2–hour, Adult or Concession, and available in all zones. Pricing will be the same as at present, for instance $6.80 for a full-fare Zone 1 daily.

The second is to buy a plastic Myki card and pre-load money onto it, which you then use each time you travel. This is called ‘Myki money’ and trips will be charged at the discounted rate, equivalent to using a 10×2 hour ticket, with a cap of two charges per day (as now) — for instance $5.88 for a day in Zone 1. Travel on the weekend will be capped at the current Weekend Saver rate, for example $3.00 for Zones 1 and 2.

The third is to use a plastic Myki card and load a ‘Myki pass’ onto it. This can be a weekly, or any time period from 28 to 365 consecutive days. The pass is valid from the time of first use. The weekly pass pricing will be the same as now ($29.40 for Zone 1). For longer periods the pricing will be similar to that used now for Monthlies and Yearlies.

At the time of writing it is uncertain if the ‘all zones in weekends’ travel benefit available with current periodical tickets will be retained. We will be watching this issue carefully: as recently as the 1990s, a periodical ticket entitled the bearer and their entire family to free travel on weekends, a loyalty benefit which has been steady eroded. Update: This benefit is being withdrawn: See below for the TTA’s response on this.

A plastic Myki card can actually have a combination of a ‘Myki pass’ and ‘Myki money’. The Myki pass would be used for regular travel, while the Myki money would be available for occasional trips outside the zone/s covered by the Myki pass.

The plastic Myki cards will not be free. The pricing will be $10 full fare and $7 concession. A range of people including Seniors Sunday pass holders will be posted free Myki cards. The cards will be able to go into negative balance to complete a trip, so the reasoning is that by charging for the card it will prevent people just throwing them away and getting a new one, thus avoiding the need to pay for travel.

For people switching to Myki early, there will be incentives to make getting a Myki cheaper or free. In the regional areas, the cards were initially offered for $5, with $5 of Myki money on them — so effectively free.

How will you use Myki?

Passengers will be required to touch on, and off, on every trip. This is how the Myki system will work out if a Myki pass covers the trip, or if Myki money needs to be deducted from the card, and if so, how much.

The Transport Ticketing Authority has been studying the likely effect of this on passenger flows and vehicle speeds. In March it was revealed that studies, conducted in 2007, concluded that trams at busy stops would suffer extra delays. The TTA say they used this information to make adjustments to the location of scanners to improve boarding times.

Some delays were also seen initially in regional town buses, though our Geelong branch has concluded that the worst delays have dissipated as passengers have got used to the new system. (A few issues still remain, though.)

And if you don’t touch off? There will be a ‘default fare’ applied, which penalises you for not doing so. This is yet to be announced, but judging from the regional pricing, this is likely to be a minimal 20 cent charge for trams and buses operating in a single zone. The real ‘hit’ comes on the rail system or on multi-zone buses and trams (such as routes 75 and 86). On these routes, the default fare is likely to be the cost of travelling in two zones, plus the 20 cents.

Update 21/10/2009: The TTA has announced that the default fare on the rail system is the zone 1+2 two-hour discounted fare, $4.96 (full fare). On trams and buses, the default fare is the fare to the end of the line.

Want to know more?

In the next few weeks more information about the Myki rollout is expected to be made public. And if you’re curious, check the Myki web site to read about how it works in regional towns.

Also, the Transport Ticketing Authority will be available at our Members Meeting at 6pm on Monday 12 October (at Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne) to answer your questions about Myki.

Please note, you must be a current PTUA member to attend PTUA Members Meetings. You can join now or on the night.

Update: You can now read all about it in the Fares and Ticketing Manual (Myki) available on the Metlink web site.

Answers to questions from the PTUA’s Myki meeting

We’ve got these responses back from the Transport Ticketing Authority regarding questions raised at the meeting which could not be answered on the night:

Q. Periodical zone benefit: at present Weekly or longer ticketholders can use their ticket in both metropolitan zones. We understand this benefit will be withdrawn under Myki, but the cost for the extra zone will be small due to the weekend caps in place. Can you state (using 2009 prices) how much will this extra zone cost be for full fare and concession users, for a zone 1 user going into zone 2, and for a zone 2 user going into zone 1? And how precisely is this calculated?

The system counts the value of a pass towards the myki money daily cap which is $3 on weekends.

The maximum someone will pay with myki money for a single trip travelling in the metro area is shown below:

Full fare customer with zone 1 myki pass – $0.06
Full fare customer with zone 2 myki pass – $0.98
Concession customer with zone 1 myki pass – $1.01
Concession customer with zone 2 myki pass – $1.47

However, concession users will pay less than this if they travel again after their 2hr product has expired, for example a Concession customer with zone 1 myki pass travelling into Zone 2 who reaches a daily cap will pay $ 0.06.

This also applies to travel to regional cities. If a Zone 1 myki pass holder wants to go to Geelong, then they won’t pay the first $2.94 of their fare on the way out. So there are benefits for people going to/from regional Victoria.

Q. What happens in the situation that network communications between the scanner and Myki’s central database goes down? Will tickets continue to work properly and transactions recorded correctly? (Are buses and trams wirelessly connected to the database? How reliable will this be, particularly in hilly areas such as the Dandenongs?)

Value is stored on the card. Myki readers operate independently of communications with back office software for up to seven days. There are no continuous communication requirements between the devices on all three modes and the myki central system for successful operation of the system.

Because card readers are independent of each other, it is extremely unlikely that all devices at a train station, or onboard a tram or bus will not be working at the same time. What this means is customers will always be able to touch on and touch off every time they take public transport.

Q. Current Monthly tickets run for a calendar month. What is the price difference between a Monthly ticket (currently valid for up to 31 days) and a 31 day pass under Myki?

The price per day for a pass is the monthly ticket price divided by the average number of days per month (eg. 30.4). So if you purchase a 30 day pass it will be cheaper than a monthly ticket, and if you purchase a 31 day pass it will be slightly more expensive. We have replicated the current pricing.
Using concession pricing as an example: the myki price for a zone 1 concession pass will be $1.80 by the desired number of days. Currently a zone 1 concession monthly pass works out at $1.76 per day if there are 31 days in the month, if there are 28 days in the month the daily price works out at $1.95.

So a myki zone 1 concession monthly pass would cost $55.80.

Q. Will there be some kind of prompt that a Myki pass is about to expire (either pushed via email/SMS to a registered passenger, or a prompt on the scanners)? What about Myki money about to run out (particularly if no autoload amount has been set)?

There are no current plans to email or SMS customers, but this can be looked at for future functionality, if customers find this desirable. Yellow warning lights on myki readers remind customers of that their balance is low or they only have a few days remaining on their myki pass. The value remaining on the card can be seen at touch off.

Q. Will tram vending machines take credit and/or ATM cards?

No.

Q. Will every station platform have a vending machine?

Not all V/Line stations will have vending machines.
On the electrified network it is intended that stations will have vending machines in approximately the same locations as they are now.

Q. Are all the station platform scanners now in place? (It’s notable that the entrance to McKinnon platforms 1/2 appears to have only a single scanner; there may be others in this boat.)

Device installation is almost complete. There are some locations where we are not permitted to install both myki readers yet – Mackinnon is one of these – this is due to space /design restrictions in almost all instances – for example the Mackinnon Metcard validator is in the same location that the 2nd myki reader will be going , so this will not be installed until later in transition , once the metcard validators are able to be removed.

Q. What will the Myki call centre hours be?

6am to 10pm, 7 days a week

Q. Short-term tickets: Will there be a scheme to hand them back for wiping and re-using? (Further thought: this is probably impractical for vending machines, where the tickets would need to be on a roll in the machine, but might work for tickets sold by station staff or bus drivers.)

There are no plans to reuse short term tickets. To reduce the use of short term tickets, we will be encouraging the use of myki.

Q. We know short-term tickets are not recyclable – are they bio-degradable?

No. Every attempt will be made to encourage customers to use myki instead of short term tickets.

Q. If someone using Myki Money lives in the CBD and catches a tram two stops, they’ll initially be charged the 10x City Saver rate $2.18. If they board another tram within the two-hour period, will they be upgraded to paying for 2 hours ($2.94)?

Yes. Because that will be the best fare for that trip for that customer using myki money.

Q. Currently compensation is payable for poor tram or train performance for monthly and longer ticketholders, but only if a claim form is submitted, which is a significant barrier. Are there any plans for the Myki system be able to handle this automatically?

Public transport users will still be able to claim customer compensation once myki is introduced, provided they have a myki pass valid for 28 days of travel or more.

Customers will need to quote their unique myki number to claim compensation. We are investigating an online application process in addition to the current paper-based process

Q. Someone using Myki Money has taken one trip and their current two hours expires at 2pm. They board a tram at 1:50pm, touching-on, and alight half-an-hour later, touching-off at 2:20pm. Does Myki include that trip within the first two-hour block, or charge them for another two-hour block? (Under the current system the time charged is based on the start of the trip; a 10×2 hour Metcard would only use one block of time.)

Current arrangements relating to timing of trips and ticket expiry remain the same.

See also:

• The Age’s Myki FAQ
• PTUA: Myki: swings and roundabouts for passengers
• Fares and Ticketing Manual (Myki)
• 3AW: Myki — Get ready for a ‘fair go’! — including questions and answers
• Join the PTUA to get regular updates, access to discounted yearly tickets, and to help our campaign for better public transport

It’s not too long ago that the only visible infrastructure project underway on Melbourne’s rail system was the Craigieburn electrification. This is no longer the case. Say what you like about the government, but it is undeniable that a number projects have now been funded, right across the rail network.

But are they the right solutions? And are we getting our money’s worth?

This interactive map summarises what’s going on where, when each project will be finished, and how much it’ll cost. Move your mouse over each project to see the details. (Requires Flash)

Printable PDF version (409 Kb)

More information:

• The truth behind South Morang — an expanded version of the newsletter article
• Nunawading station design short-sighted — since this map was prepared, it has been announced that the station design has been revised
• Users ask the government how much slower the new rail link to Geelong will be
• What’s missing: Connecting to the Future
• The official Government view: Victorian Transport Plan