For a long while I have been watching and waiting for the full introduction of TransLink’s vision: integrated smart card travel.
Getting a clearer picture of people’s public transport habits and ticketless transition from one mode to another was going to allow transport planners to better design routes and timetables to make urban transport seamless.
So what’s in it for those mystery people who calmly beep through the barriers at Central?
go cards are "designed to make catching public transport simpler, whilst as much as possible ensuring that existing costs of travel are maintained.'
For a standard working week – Monday to Friday – I take 10 ‘trips’. If I buy a weekly ticket, I pay for 4 days peak fare and get my Friday thrown in for free (which is ironic, because it is the day I’d least like to go to work).
For this regime a go card is neutral (apart from the intro fee). After 6 trips in a 7 day period, the rest of your travel is half price, effectively meaning that Thursday and Friday are half price.
Of course what you don’t get is any travel on the weekend. My current weekly (or monthly) ticket gives me FREE travel – within my allotted zone - on Saturday and Sunday; something a go card doesn’t do.
These days, I do a fair amount of travelling on public transport on weekend and this will definitely increase once the rugby season kicks in and we are making trips to the likes of Ashgrove, Everton Park, Albion (to play "The Filth") etc., not just on Saturdays, but now on Sundays. (Oh for the love of the game…)
In addition, we are often making extra trips on public transport during the week (and being a bit naughty: sharing my weekly ticket if Penny is making that extra trip).
All in, I’d say I get excellent value out of paper ticket thank you very much.
Till now, for Penny, things aren’t so clear cut. A weekly is hasn’t always the best value, as she hasn’t always required at least 4 days travel in a week (though again, this will change with rugby fixtures). Often Penny has to jump on and off public transport through the city (say at Central for a short while, then on to Buranda and possibly back to Central, then home). Technically speaking, what constitutes a ‘trip’? If she exits the transit system at Central, but a couple of hours later needs to travel to Buranda, is that 1 trip or 2?
Doing the sums gives a fairly clear-cut answer on what’s best for us: go card isn’t. The fare structure is clearly designed for the public transport commuter/private car owner. Nothing about it is transformative: in a sense it is transport paradigm neutral. Offering nothing to the likes of me, and just a few minutes of convenience each month to the typical Brisbane household.
So why worry? Well, you just know that in a few years time we will be made to get one: paper tickets will be thing of the past and full and regular users of public transport will be made to pay more than they did before.
6 comments:
And - what about the gates set up for this card system? The fat pylons between the gate are about the width of the gates themselves, and the entrances they are situated in have not been widenned. So - those entrances are now effectively half the width.
It was hard enough enter or exit before the gates were put there during busier times.
Now that each person has to stop, swipe his card and wait for the gates to open - it's ridiculous.
But - we have to make sure that PT is financed.
The problem of not being able to have a fare structure which suits everyone is just one instance of the inevitable and unavoidable compromises of using a communal system like public transport.
This is why you walk from your home to the nearest station, whereas each person can have a car in their own driveway.
I just bought my first"Smart Card". I did that because the new ticketing system is so much slower than the old one, is harder to use by a significant factor and already on two occasions it has failed to deliver me paid for tickets.
It is a debacle. A mess. Frustrating.
The reasons for the delays in introducing it are now so self evident that you have to wonder about QR's ability to plan ahead.
But aside from that after travelling the networks in Sydney and Melbourne over the years it seems to me that "Smart Card" is an exercise in privatisation -- the selective shelving off of a potentially profitable element of QR admin. Watch as they soon enough put "Smart card" on the market as a consumable available at a range of retail and ticketing outlets and sold in effect by another corporation. Whether they force all of us onto Smart Card remains to be seen but obviously it is about rolling back staff numbers AGAIN and running the system through bully boy inspectors rather than point of travel staff. Flash your card and they'll leave you alone. Without it you're fare game.
So you'll soon enough get an admin fee and that admin fee(above the deposit) -- a surcharge -- will have to be engineered so it doesn't cause people to return to what ever may remain of paper tickets.
Because one thing you don't note is that if I travel from A to B and then to C and back to A. -- on a paper ticket within the specified zone its one return trip. On SmartCard it's two, isn't it? -- because my account is deducted everytime I second swipe my card and I have to swipe at each transit point.
Thanks Dave.
Now, has it occurred to anyone that the aim behind the big push for "sustainable development", unquestionningly supported and promoted now by governnments, corporations and the media, may be the "privatisation" (monopolisation) of our means of travel which those same institutions are also conducting?
If we all have our own vehicles, we do not depend on such a monopoly for transport. Is this where the hostility toward cars is really coming from?
In this context, does it not worry anyone that "bully boys" - and police officers - are checking on you at every step? Remember, Fascism is a form of socialism, and is also a partnership between big corporations and govenment in running all industries and services. And to impose Fascism you need bullies everywhere.
Also - the system is being run poorly by the government and it's corporate contractors. Is there any reason to expect that this to change?
Today I went to the South Brisbane busway station and for the first time saw a uniformed ticket inspector at the top of the stairs from the overpass to the platforms.
For what purpose? Bus drivers check your ticket as you get on.
He wore a tacky green and white uniform which I have never seen before. What is he? A security officer?
He said that the busway station is now a "prepaid area". Does this mean you need a weekly ticket just to use it. Can't you make a single trip? Aren't these busway stations supposed to make it easier to travel?
Note also that it involves more rigmorole, more monitoring, more checkpoints, more regimentation. When public transport is all there is, will we be checked on at every point on ever journey we make?
Help stop the Hale Street Bridge and have the money put into public transport, walking, cycling and parks
The Stop the Hale Street Bridge alliance are calling on people to
write to Anna Bligh regarding the Hale Street Bridge. They believe
public opinion, and even the opinion of the Courier Mail, is turning on this project.
The No Tunnels / Community Action for Sustainable Transport letter has been submitted today and you can read it here
www.notunnels.net/files/HaleSt28July08Bligh.pdf
Write your own quick letter to the Premier South.Brisbane@parliament.qld.gov.au
Post a Comment