tcard

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.