Tcard v2

16 Sep 2008 in Urban affairs by Enoch Lau | 2 comments

Weekly train tick­ets to go the way of the Tcard: here we go again.

I think run­ning the new and old sys­tems side by side would ensure a smooth trans­ition, but I don’t think slid­ing dis­counts should be imple­men­ted. There’s no good reason why less fre­quent trav­el­lers should sub­sid­ise more fre­quent trav­el­lers. Part of the reason why Travel­Tens and friends are sold at a dis­count to the stand­ard fare is, I would pre­sume, to encour­age effi­ciency, by amort­ising the cost of trans­ac­tions over a num­ber of trips. (Sup­pose buy­ing a $2 ticket takes 30 seconds, and we hire someone to sit there at $30/​hr. You can do the maths.) With a top-​​up smart­card, this rationale no longer exists. In Hong Kong and Singa­pore, for example, indi­vidual trips are sub­stan­tially cheaper than an equi­val­ent trip in Sydney – so much cheaper that there’s no need for slid­ing dis­counts for reg­u­lar users. The other prob­lem with slid­ing dis­counts is that it reflects a nar­row men­tal­ity that people should use pub­lic trans­port for get­ting from home to work and back again (thereby tak­ing a reg­u­lar route and attract­ing a dis­count), whereas pub­lic trans­port should be far more per­vas­ive than that.

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  1. Tommy Chen’s avatar

    Tommy Chen on 20 Sep 2008 at 7:19 PM

    Dis­counts are used to incentiv­ise the use of Travel Tens because they save time and costs at the point of sale and con­sump­tion: it makes busses run more smoothly.

    With a smart card, this rationale no longer exists. How­ever, for people who usu­ally travel on Travel Tens, they should be entitled to expect that their fares should not go up. So what do you do? Make per-​​trip costs the same as cur­rent Travel Ten costs? But then the gov­ern­ment seems to lose rev­enue, depend­ing on the level of soph­ist­ic­a­tion fo their modelling.

    The NSW gov­ern­ment is too tightarse, that’s the problem.

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  2. Enoch Lau’s avatar

    Enoch Lau on 20 Sep 2008 at 7:57 PM

    Def­in­itely, trips taken with the smart card should not cost more than using exist­ing Travel­Tens etc, oth­er­wise there would be abso­lutely no incent­ive to switch. If I were run­ning the show, I’d con­sider giv­ing smart card users a sub­stan­tial dis­count, and once everyone’s con­ver­ted, slowly raise the prices until the rev­enue goes back up to a reas­on­able level.

    How­ever, the two sys­tems can­not run side by side forever. I pay roughly $2.10 per day for a return trip to the city from East Hills with my Flexipass – and I’d say that’s pretty much a steal. Of course I like it how it is, but I’d say it’s rather low.

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