@ajsadauskas@TheOne - yes, but the situation needs to be evaluated as a whole from the point of view of the user and trip: car vs PT vs active transport: marginal cost, door to door speed, quality, safety, comfort, availability. By making PT free, we would be making it a bit more competitive against car here. As it is, it loses to car in most categories for most trips, in #GoldCoast: 5% to 85%.
@tom_andraszek@ajsadauskas@TheOne I don’t think people are entirely rational economic access-seeking actors on a per-trip basis. I’m more interested in the psychological difference between pay-per-trip (transit) and pay-once-a-year (car insurance, rates - plus monthly payments if you have a lease, but you can’t just not pay them if you don’t drive, it’s a long term commitment too).
@tom_andraszek@ajsadauskas@TheOne Free PT is one way to align payment frequency (well, remove the pay-per-trip and replace it with nothing), but another is discounted long term public transport passes, creating pre-commitment to taking public transport. And another, perhaps more politically difficult, is road fares per car trip…
@jroper@ajsadauskas@TheOne - oh, people are definitely #PredictablyIrrational when making decisions - check out the 2008 book by Dan Ariely, especially the chapter about the disproportional power of free.
Yep, if you want people to use something less, make them pay for it every time they use it (there are no PT passes in Queensland).
Also, people rarely compare total car ownership costs, which some PT advocates are fixated on, vs fares. It’s per trip decision if you have a car already.
@tom_andraszek@ajsadauskas@TheOne Well not perhaps, obviously more difficult. Discounted monthly passes already used to exist, and I don’t see that they’re technically incompatible with smart-card systems.
Monthly or yearly passes could be salary sacrified and/or a welfare benefit, resulting in many people getting effectively free PT - but seeing it differently from general free PT, as a thing of value that they paid for/were given and should take advantage of… maybe.
@jroper@tom_andraszek@TheOne Definitely agree that speed, reach, and frequency should be the main priority. Especially given the very sorry state of public transport in many suburbs and towns.
One of the most lowkey-socialist things Gladys Berejiklian ever caused to happen (I can only guess her direct influence) was to remove the classist and cognitive burden of Sydney’s fare incentives and rewards
Labor’s T-Card and London’s Oyster had/have none of these policy goals
Meanwhile Melbourne is cruel and lazy, charging $3.10 to go a few bus stops (2-hour minimum)
@jroper@tom_andraszek@ajsadauskas@TheOne While I’m here allow me to vent indignation at being charged by time instead of distance — thus rewarding for delay — and impacting those who can least afford it, with commutes approaching the 2-hour mark
I also wish to applaud the Gladys era of Sydney Buses for switching to a line-of-sight distance charging scheme
I am NOT defending bus-tram-train price differentials, but “as-the-crow-flies” fares won’t punish you twice for using indirect bus routes
@jroper@tom_andraszek@ajsadauskas@TheOne The dying days of Cabernet Dom Perignon Perrotet were bizarre with the kinds of policies you only see when a government thinks they won’t return
Such as: Pushing down the Opal weekly cap even further. It’s a pure social policy objective. No other desired outcome.
The exact same thing is true when fare collection is abolished and saves as money money as it costs.
Weekly motorway toll caps instead of lower weekly Opal caps
This is our “socialist” party in charge now. I’m grateful it’s only temporary and they’re putting Australia’s most famous most capable most pointy-headed policy wonk, love child of The Sandman and Merlin the Mandarin, the one & only Alan Fels — in charge of solving Sydney’s toll structure once and for all
@jroper@tom_andraszek@TheOne Discounted long-term passes for locals would be a great middle ground between free public transport and paying a fare for each journey.
NSW offers a fare cap, and that is certainly one way of effectively implementing long-term tickets for regular commuters.
In NSW, and I’d assume in other states too, there is a photo ID card that’s available to people who don’t have a driver’s licence. Potentially there’s an opportunity there to bundle a year of public transport with the ID?
For tourists (especially from overseas), you could offer public transport fares as part of the cost of the airfare. I know there are countries overseas — Spain comes to mind — that do something like that?
Another option would be to bundle the transport fare with your council rates or weekly rent. That would acknowledge that home owners or residents who live in close proximity to public transport still benefit from the system, even if they don’t use it themselves.
@ajsadauskas@tom_andraszek@TheOne I think it would be great to have a service that is as convenient as driving. I live near a major bus route working 6km of cbd as the bus goes, but can still wait up to 15 mins for a bus.
@Danwwilson@ajsadauskas@TheOne - frequency is freedom, when it is a metro style frequency: every 3 minutes or so, but PT should not run empty most of the time either, so punctuality/reliability is super important in non-metro services: people can plan activities when they know, to the minute, when the bus will come, even if it comes once an hour, but they switch to driving if the bus gets cancelled or is late, more than let’s say once a month?
@tom_andraszek@Danwwilson@ajsadauskas@TheOne there’s a long commuter bus line near me that only comes every 45 minutes, and I’ve heard it has a habit of being like 10-15 minutes EARLY and then leaving early too. Totally misses the point. Makes it completely unusable unless you waste an extra 15 minutes every day accommodating its potential early running.
Let’s say running 10 bus services per day costs $100 (driver+fuel), fares bring $20, card readers+ticket inspectors+software cost $10. Net: 100+10-20=$90. You can make it free: 100, or double services, net: 200+20-40=180, or double and free: 200.
Fares and services are weakly related. It’s not this OR that.
I know of one city where fares cover operating costs: Singapore.
@ajsadauskas@Danwwilson@TheOne - the Japanese include all revenue, not just fare revenue, and they make money from real estate at/around train stations.
@tom_andraszek@Danwwilson@TheOne Renting real estate above and around train stations is a model we should look a lot more at in Australia.
It means transport-oriented developments around stations, with the rents feeding back into covering the cost of train services.
There are some great examples of this in Australia already too. Chatswood and St Leonards in Sydney; Box Hill and Melbourne Central in Melbourne spring to mind.
It certainly makes a lot more sense than having open air car parks.
@tom_andraszek@ajsadauskas@TheOne to be honest I’d be happy if the govt spent as much on PT/active travel as they did on adding/maintaining roads. Now I haven’t looked at budgets to see if they do, I’m just making a big assumption that they don’t at the moment.
@Danwwilson@ajsadauskas@TheOne - the last time I looked at Queensland transport spending on new projects, the cars were getting the most of the funds…yep, look at the numbers in this misleading pie chart:
@tom_andraszek@ajsadauskas@TheOne absolutely WILD! I get roads connect cities and towns in a way that PT doesn’t, but I think we’d agree that once a road is in place, we shouldn’t need to widen it. Instead if demand gets too high, we clearly need to invest in alternative transport solutions like PT and active transport.
@ajsadauskas @TheOne - yes, but the situation needs to be evaluated as a whole from the point of view of the user and trip: car vs PT vs active transport: marginal cost, door to door speed, quality, safety, comfort, availability. By making PT free, we would be making it a bit more competitive against car here. As it is, it loses to car in most categories for most trips, in #GoldCoast: 5% to 85%.
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne I don’t think people are entirely rational economic access-seeking actors on a per-trip basis. I’m more interested in the psychological difference between pay-per-trip (transit) and pay-once-a-year (car insurance, rates - plus monthly payments if you have a lease, but you can’t just not pay them if you don’t drive, it’s a long term commitment too).
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne Free PT is one way to align payment frequency (well, remove the pay-per-trip and replace it with nothing), but another is discounted long term public transport passes, creating pre-commitment to taking public transport. And another, perhaps more politically difficult, is road fares per car trip…
@jroper @ajsadauskas @TheOne - oh, people are definitely #PredictablyIrrational when making decisions - check out the 2008 book by Dan Ariely, especially the chapter about the disproportional power of free.
Yep, if you want people to use something less, make them pay for it every time they use it (there are no PT passes in Queensland).
Also, people rarely compare total car ownership costs, which some PT advocates are fixated on, vs fares. It’s per trip decision if you have a car already.
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne Well not perhaps, obviously more difficult. Discounted monthly passes already used to exist, and I don’t see that they’re technically incompatible with smart-card systems.
Monthly or yearly passes could be salary sacrified and/or a welfare benefit, resulting in many people getting effectively free PT - but seeing it differently from general free PT, as a thing of value that they paid for/were given and should take advantage of… maybe.
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne but this is all just tinkering compared to competitive speed, frequency, and reach/door-to-door time.
@jroper @tom_andraszek @TheOne Definitely agree that speed, reach, and frequency should be the main priority. Especially given the very sorry state of public transport in many suburbs and towns.
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@jroper @tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne Please let’s not return to the crazy days of monthly / quarterly / yearly passes
One of the most lowkey-socialist things Gladys Berejiklian ever caused to happen (I can only guess her direct influence) was to remove the classist and cognitive burden of Sydney’s fare incentives and rewards
Labor’s T-Card and London’s Oyster had/have none of these policy goals
Meanwhile Melbourne is cruel and lazy, charging $3.10 to go a few bus stops (2-hour minimum)
@jroper @tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne While I’m here allow me to vent indignation at being charged by time instead of distance — thus rewarding for delay — and impacting those who can least afford it, with commutes approaching the 2-hour mark
I also wish to applaud the Gladys era of Sydney Buses for switching to a line-of-sight distance charging scheme
I am NOT defending bus-tram-train price differentials, but “as-the-crow-flies” fares won’t punish you twice for using indirect bus routes
@jroper @tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne The dying days of Cabernet Dom Perignon Perrotet were bizarre with the kinds of policies you only see when a government thinks they won’t return
Such as: Pushing down the Opal weekly cap even further. It’s a pure social policy objective. No other desired outcome.
The exact same thing is true when fare collection is abolished and saves as money money as it costs.
@jroper @tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne Ironically, what Chris Minns and NSW Labor is giving us instead is:
Weekly motorway toll caps instead of lower weekly Opal caps
This is our “socialist” party in charge now. I’m grateful it’s only temporary and they’re putting Australia’s most famous most capable most pointy-headed policy wonk, love child of The Sandman and Merlin the Mandarin, the one & only Alan Fels — in charge of solving Sydney’s toll structure once and for all
If it’s possible!
@jroper @tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne I’ve gone off on a rant now … all I ask is for policies that:
• make roads cost money not free
• make arterials that aren’t streets
• make arterials that are invisible
• rip up asphalt from “stroads”
(like Parramatta Road, Princes Hwy, Military Road and replace it with bike lanes, lines of trees, outdoor seating)
Neither major party offered all of the above but, weirdly, so weirdly, one of them had gone hard with the first three
@jroper @tom_andraszek @TheOne Discounted long-term passes for locals would be a great middle ground between free public transport and paying a fare for each journey.
NSW offers a fare cap, and that is certainly one way of effectively implementing long-term tickets for regular commuters.
In NSW, and I’d assume in other states too, there is a photo ID card that’s available to people who don’t have a driver’s licence. Potentially there’s an opportunity there to bundle a year of public transport with the ID?
For tourists (especially from overseas), you could offer public transport fares as part of the cost of the airfare. I know there are countries overseas — Spain comes to mind — that do something like that?
Another option would be to bundle the transport fare with your council rates or weekly rent. That would acknowledge that home owners or residents who live in close proximity to public transport still benefit from the system, even if they don’t use it themselves.
@ajsadauskas @jroper @tom_andraszek @TheOne I’m 100% willing to be convinced I’m wrong on this, so please do, but:
Would every $1 that’s spent on this be more effective (eventually) if channelled into frequency etc?
What’s that concept of “memorisable timetable” that’s not even a timetable because it’s every 10 mins?
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne I’d rather increase the frequency of PT before we remove fairs.
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne I might also learn to spell one day 🤷♂️
@Danwwilson @tom_andraszek @TheOne I definitely agree that improving services should be a priority over removing fares.
Better to pay for a system that’s good than get a free ride on one that’s awful.
@ajsadauskas @tom_andraszek @TheOne I think it would be great to have a service that is as convenient as driving. I live near a major bus route working 6km of cbd as the bus goes, but can still wait up to 15 mins for a bus.
@Danwwilson @ajsadauskas @TheOne - frequency is freedom, when it is a metro style frequency: every 3 minutes or so, but PT should not run empty most of the time either, so punctuality/reliability is super important in non-metro services: people can plan activities when they know, to the minute, when the bus will come, even if it comes once an hour, but they switch to driving if the bus gets cancelled or is late, more than let’s say once a month?
@tom_andraszek @Danwwilson @ajsadauskas @TheOne there’s a long commuter bus line near me that only comes every 45 minutes, and I’ve heard it has a habit of being like 10-15 minutes EARLY and then leaving early too. Totally misses the point. Makes it completely unusable unless you waste an extra 15 minutes every day accommodating its potential early running.
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne that’s helpful to understand. 🙂
@ajsadauskas @Danwwilson @TheOne - sure, but in the Queensland example I gave removing fares may cost almost nothing.
Let’s say running 10 bus services per day costs $100 (driver+fuel), fares bring $20, card readers+ticket inspectors+software cost $10. Net: 100+10-20=$90. You can make it free: 100, or double services, net: 200+20-40=180, or double and free: 200.
Fares and services are weakly related. It’s not this OR that.
I know of one city where fares cover operating costs: Singapore.
@ajsadauskas @Danwwilson @TheOne - I forgot about Hong Kong, and Japan with many private rail operators: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
@ajsadauskas @Danwwilson @TheOne - the Japanese include all revenue, not just fare revenue, and they make money from real estate at/around train stations.
@tom_andraszek @Danwwilson @TheOne Renting real estate above and around train stations is a model we should look a lot more at in Australia.
It means transport-oriented developments around stations, with the rents feeding back into covering the cost of train services.
There are some great examples of this in Australia already too. Chatswood and St Leonards in Sydney; Box Hill and Melbourne Central in Melbourne spring to mind.
It certainly makes a lot more sense than having open air car parks.
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne to be honest I’d be happy if the govt spent as much on PT/active travel as they did on adding/maintaining roads. Now I haven’t looked at budgets to see if they do, I’m just making a big assumption that they don’t at the moment.
@Danwwilson @ajsadauskas @TheOne - the last time I looked at Queensland transport spending on new projects, the cars were getting the most of the funds…yep, look at the numbers in this misleading pie chart:
@tom_andraszek @Danwwilson @ajsadauskas @TheOne #billiondollarnews hey look, Car Money is like Dog Years
@Danwwilson @ajsadauskas @TheOne - source: https://www.publications.qld.gov.au/dataset/queensland-transport-and-roads-investment-program-qtrip-2021-22-to-2024-25/resource/31b923ca-932b-4637-80ea-d187d63b23ea
@tom_andraszek @ajsadauskas @TheOne absolutely WILD! I get roads connect cities and towns in a way that PT doesn’t, but I think we’d agree that once a road is in place, we shouldn’t need to widen it. Instead if demand gets too high, we clearly need to invest in alternative transport solutions like PT and active transport.