With perhaps the shortest notice ever, we have now learned the extent to which public transport fares are going to rise on October 1st because of the hike in GST from 12.5% to 15%. Here’s ARTA’s media release:

Public Transport fares to rise in line with GST increase

The Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) announced today the government’s GST increase will come into effect for all public transport fares in Auckland starting on Friday
1st October 2010.

Fullers Waiheke Island service, tourist and other charter service fares will increase on Friday 1st October. Other fare increases for bus, train and most ferry services will come into effect on Sunday 3rd October.

ARTA’s General Manager, Customer Services, Mark Lambert, said “It is important that all customers check the MAXX website www.maxx.co.nz or call the contact centre for full details and to get a breakdown of the changes in fares so they are prepared.”

First reading this media release my thought was “well that’s incredibly unhelpful, what are the actual fare rises?” In yet another indictment of Auckland’s stupidly complex ticketing system, we have to go to not only one webpage, but a whole pile of them to find out what the actual fare rises are. For my one stage bus ride, the price goes up from $1.70 to $1.80 (although as I used stored value that will knock a measly 10% off the fare). This is a bit galling as the fare already went up 10c back in January this year – although I guess to be generous to ARTA they didn’t know the government would raise GST.

A single stage rail fare has also gone up from $1.50 to $1.60. It seems a bit strange that another opportunity was missed to better align rail fares and bus fares – something that is surely inevitable once we have integrated ticketing up and running. Once good thing to see is that it seems as though the monthly passes have not increased in cost – which is excellent as I think we should be encouraging more and more people to purchase unlimited ride passes (as they will be likely to use PT for non-work trips if it’s “free”).

I would have done a few things different though:

  1. Raised the cash fares a bit more, but made it so that stored value cards give a 20% discount on the cash fare rather than only a 10% discount. The more people using cards for PT, the faster boarding will be (particularly once we get a contactless smart card).
  2. Looked at the fare change as an opportunity to phase out multi-journey rides, instead replacing them with stored value. This would have involved allowing university students to access the 40% discount they get on stored value and monthly passes, not just on multi-journey passes.
  3. Raised rail fares more than buses, perhaps not to the extent of complete alignment between the two – but to bring it closer to alignment. The sooner we head down this track the better as it means there won’t be a sharp and nasty fare correction later on to match the two up.

I would have also announced the details a bit sooner. We’ve known about the rise in GST since May.

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14 comments

  1. Monthly fares have increased in cost (at least for trains), remember that they can only be purchased from ticket agents now so you may have been comparing the new prices to the old onboard pricing.
    Adult City is now $110 (was $105), All zones is now $170 (was $165), Regional is now $240 (was $235) and Discovery is now $230 (was $225).

  2. Personally I think it is interesting the way they have done it. They have done the bare minimum nessessary and I think the main reason is that they will be reorganising everything next year when integrated ticketing comes out. There is no point going through the hassle of trying to make the fares match when you are changing the playing field next year where we might not even have stage based fares.

    Train fares have gone up 10c as well but monthlys have gone by $5

  3. I wonder whether this fare rise will be “revenue neutral” for them. The increase in GST should make a 1.50 fare 1.53 (you multiply the current price by 46/45 or 1.0222222). Rounding that up to 1.60 is a big leap.

    OK, just looked all the stage fare increases for Metrolink, GoWest etc. Currently stages 1 through 8 cost $1.70, 3.30, 4.40, 5.50, 6.60, 7.70, 8.80, 10 respectively. The new prices are 1.80, 3.40, 4.50, 5.60, 6.80, 7.90, 9, 10.30. The percentage increases are 5.9 3 2.3 1.8 3 2.6 2.3 3. The all stage fares have increased about the GST rise except a 3 stage fare.

    Seems a bit rough given current economic conditions…

  4. Hey, my comment disappeared! The point was that the fares should see a rise of 2.22% if the move were “revenue neutral”. But looking at the Go West/Mtrolink etc services as an example we see rises for stage 1–8 fares of 5.9% 3% 2.3% 1.8% 3% 2.6% 2.3% 3% respectively. That is, all stage fares have increased above the GST rise except a 3 stage fare.

    Seems a bit rough given current economic conditions…

  5. But Matt, that is assuming that they will change all the fares and only have a single integrate fare structure. I don’t know if we can make that assumption given the public-private neolib model of service provision.
    There are three possible ways they could apply “integrated ticketing”:

    1) A ‘smart’ stored value card that is a accepted by all operators to pay for each operators individual fare products, possibly with some sort of token transfer ticket (i.e. the Sydney model).
    2) A common stored value card plus an integrated fare product that is accepted on all operators, who still maintain their individual fare products as well (i.e. the Northern Busway model).
    3) Only the common card and integrated fare range, while all of the various operator specific fares are done away with (i.e the Melbourne model)

    You are assuming option three, which would be the best in my opinion although the hardest to implement. It would go hand in hand with gross contracting, but I can see the operators screaming blue murder about government regulation and interference in their buisiness, etc.
    Option one would be quite a cop out, but it would be most consistent with the neo lib ‘free market will provide’ approach we currently have in Auckland. That would be basically the status quo except all opearators would use an interoperable stored value system (“there you go, theres you’re integrated ticketing system, now shut up and pay the money”).
    Option two is the most likely in my opinion, given the precident set by the Northern Pass and the fact that it doesn’t ‘interfere’ with the operators products (it is simply in additon to them). This would give people the opportunity to transfer and have a single daily or weekly pass for or transport, however it wouldn’t have the quite efficiency and time saving benefits of only having the integrated pass. I think one key thing for moving toward a transfer based network would be to have anyone and everyone able to transfer without penalty so that novices can pick it up or regular users could do it on a whim. (“I would catch the bus out to Newmarket for that meeting, but I only got a normal stage ticket this morning instead of an integrated pass…”)

  6. When I was working for Metro in Wellington several years ago, and it needed a fares increase, we used it as an opportunity to rationalise the cash fare structure down to multiples of 50 cents (this was before the new coins were brought in). Apart from making life simpler for our clippies, I wonder if this approach could be encouraged for bus operator use.

    Another trick, used in London and even in Scotland: ticket machines at the busier bus stops. The clever ones give change. Maybe something like that would reduce at least some impedance to bus use?

  7. There are ticket machines at the Northern Busway Stations, I guess the thing there is they can easily sell just the Busway fare products.

    If they were to put ticket machines around Downtown or at places like the New Lynn interchange, they would need machines capable of issuing some 200+ different fare products across all of the various operators…. while they could print the various tickets how people would select what they needed I don’t know (Imaging buying a NZBus ticket only to find out your bus is run by Ritchies?)

    Yet another ridiculous outcome of Auckland’s failed franchising model. Bring on a proper integrated fare structure!

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