Comparison of Melbourne vs other mainland capitals

The Public Transport Users Association supports a fare structure that is simple to use and understand, fully multimodal and appropriately priced.

Simplicity

Passengers must be able to purchase a single ticket from a limited selection at the beginning of their trip. The PTUA does not support any fare system that charges at the end of travel or where passengers are not aware of their fare at the start of their trip, including schemes based on the kilometre distance travelled (which is not general knowledge for most trips).

Multimodal

With recent reforms to integrate V/Line and metropolitan fares, Victoria already has relatively integrated fares, but there is room for further improvement. All tickets must be available for all trams, trains and buses within the relevant area, including airport buses. We support the removal of single-mode or single-operator tickets, which confuse passengers, undermine the “seamlessness” of public transport, and are generally poor value.

Fair fares

Currently, our fares are high and need to be reduced to an economical level (from the perspective of the passenger) competitive with the car. There are also anomalies in the fare system that confuse passengers. We believe that the fare system should aim to treat comparable trips equally. Of course, fares need to bring in enough revenue to avoid unreasonably high public operating subsidies — however, we believe the key to improved financial performance of public transport is to increase patronage particularly outside peak hours.

Periodical tickets should be discounted and heavily promoted, as they help keep regular passengers, cut fare evasion and reduce transaction costs, saving time and money for passengers and operators alike. Like other goods and services, fares should embody normal consumer rights. The addition of periodicals covering any length of time (such as V/Line’s date-to-date tickets) would also encourage their adoption.

Fare zones

While the removal of zone 3 in March 2007 has reduced some long-distance suburban fares, prices for most other trips remain too high. The zone concept below would have see most fare prices drop, not just zone 1-2-3 fares, and would have reduced the increment between zone 1 and zone 1-2 fares.

We believe that the system of Melbourne fare zones should be restructured as a four-zone system to remove anomalies and make the fare system more equitable. This would involve the addition of a small inner-city zone and the extension of the former Zone 2 to include Ringwood, Knox and Dandenong for consistency with the southern boundary. The former Zone 3 would cover the Mornington Peninsula, Warburton, Bacchus Marsh and Gisborne. Tullamarine Airport could be in Zone 3 to help fund the removal of premium fares on Skybus, and additional Zones added for regional centres.

This would allow the fare per zone (particularly for Zone 1) to be reduced and made consistent. The fare for the inner-city zone would therefore be comparable to the old Short Trip and Rail+2 tickets that were withdrawn in 2003.

The value of periodicals

Use of periodical tickets helps cut fare evasion and transaction costs, and build passenger loyalty. These should be promoted through schemes where yearly tickets are paid for with salary deductions. Discounts should be increased to make periodical tickets more attractive. Date-to-date tickets (such as are offered by V/Line) are expected to be made available under the Myki Smartcard system for any period the passenger chooses, something the PTUA supports.

Specific reforms

As shorter-term measures, the PTUA supports the following reforms to the fare system:

• Integration of Skybus into the regular multimodal fare system. The premium, non-integrated fares on these services deter potential passengers.
• The PTUA supported the March 2007 removal of National Bus Company single-trip tickets, to help the fare system be consistent and easy to understand, however the price of zone 1 tickets should be reduced to compensate.
• Reduce the price of Zone 1 two-hour tickets relative to that of Zone 2 tickets, to help compensate for the abolition of Short Trip tickets in 2003. Abolition of the Short Trip almost doubled the fare for many journeys.
• Adjust the zone overlap, to ensure major traffic generators are not just across zone boundaries, so that relatively short trips such as Box Hill to Camberwell will pay less than those travelling all the way into the CBD
  • Extend the zone 2 overlap inwards to locations such as Camberwell, Caulfield, Essendon and Newport
  • Extend the zone 1 overlap outwards to specific locations such as Deakin University (Burwood) and Box Hill
• Removal of zone boundary anomalies, for instance bus routes that travel between zone 1/2 stations or other major points only accepting a zone 2 fare, or only accepting a zone 1 fare. This would help boost feeder bus service patronage.
  • bus 703 between Brighton and Bentleigh accepts zone 2 only
  • bus 701 Bentleigh to Oakleigh accepts zone 2 only
  • bus 822 Southland to Chadstone requires zone 1/2 ticket although both centres are in zone 2
  • buses 802/804/862 Oakleigh to Monash accepts zone 2 only, though other buses serving Oakleigh and Monash accept zone 1 tickets
• Given their roles primarily as serving local trips and feeding into the rail system, consideration should be given to removing zones completely from tram and most bus routes.
  • Under this concept, any zone ticket would be valid on a tram or bus (with the exception of some long distance express buses serving the Doncaster area, which should eventually be upgraded to train services)
  • Greatly simplifies the zone system, with its hard-to-understand and anomalous tram/bus zone boundaries
  • Benefits feeder bus services that are in a different zone to the railway stations they serve (see examples above), helping to grow bus patronage
  • Would remove the coming Smartcard system requirement for people to “scan off” on every trip, which is likely to lead to delays in peak times. (London moved to flat fares on trams and buses for this reason.)
  • Removes the situation where a trip to a stop a few hundred metres further than a closer stop costs almost double the fare
• Alignment of all regional town bus fares to the same options as metropolitan fares: 2 hour, all day, weekly and monthly options.

Why free public transport won’t work

The PTUA does not support free public transport. As our Myths page documents, we believe the primary barrier to patronage growth is the lack of services, and we note that there is no city Melbourne’s size that has attempted to institute free public transport.

While we have had free public transport for New Year’s Eve for several years, its success is driven by the large crowds attending a range of events offered in the CBD. Free public transport on Christmas Day has also been offered regularly, but in stark contrast, public transport is relatively quiet (in part due to many suburbs having no service at all), and there is no shortage of cars on the road, with traffic snarls occurring at locations such as Springvale Road.

Free public transport would merely suck $350 million of fare revenue per year out of the system, which could be better spent improving services.

Updated: March 2007