[LINK] more myki woes

[Scott Howard]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 1:50 AM, Marghanita da Cruz <marghanita at ramin.com.au
> wrote:

> The problem with Sydney/Melbourne buses
> is the variable distance/routes and that
> it is collected on the vehicle.
> [...]
> A solution for the buses would be to
> have something Canberra's flat ride system
> or Perth's 2 hour valid ticket.
>

I can't see flat-rate tickets coming to Sydney - there's just too much
variability in the distances covered.

Some individual bus routes in Sydney are over 40KM long, and many of these
are very heavily-used routes due to the lack of other forms for public
transport (eg, Northern Beaches to the CBD). Charging the same for that 40K
journey as a 2KM trip down to the local shops would either mean
significantly increasing the short trip pricing, or would result in Sydney
Buses requiring significantly more government funding to make up the
difference - neither of which seem likely.

Newcastle also has time-based fares (1/4/24 hours), and when they were
introduces there were numerous complaints because of the increased price for
shorter trips, however Newcastle has the advantage of not having as many
people taking significantly long trips that the flat time-based fares didn't
need to be as high as they probably would in Sydney. I'm presuming Canberra
and Perth would be in a similar situation. (Swansea to Newcastle is still
around 30km, but the number of people using that route is nowhere near as
high as from Sydney's Northern Beaches to the CDB)

There are numerous countries in the world that prove that variable fares can
work. Take Singapore for example - their EZ-link card can be used on both
the MTR (train) and all buses (not to mention at McDonalds and 7-11's). On
both the train and buses you hold the card to a reader on both entering and
exiting until a "beep" is heard (<1 second). If you fail to "exit", you get
charged the maximum for that particular trip.

Until recently I had been using the same EZ-Link card since 2002!  Every
time I went to Singapore  my card would work as well as the last time,
including keeping all of my balance. Earlier this year that card had to be
replaced as they are making changes to the cards, but even then it was a
simple swap, with my balance being moved to the new card.

If Singapore has been doing this for over 8 years (and Hong Kong even
longer) there's simply no sensible reason that Sydney can't have something
similar...

  Scott.