When I was in North America earlier this year one thing I noticed about a number of the metro systems was that they used flat-fares. In New York City, for example, one ride cost $2.25 no matter how far you went and no matter how many lines you changed. While this clearly advantaged long-trips over short-trips (and we probably should have bought a seven day pass even though we were only there for five days), it certainly made riding the system incredibly easy. You didn’t have to worry about the particular cost of a trip, just how many multiples of $2.25 you had left on your MetroCard.
London’s bus system does something similar, with all trips being ₤2.30 as a cash fare or ₤1.30 as the Oyster Card fare, no matter how long they are. As someone who lives a one-stage bus fare from the city, I am wholly aware that a flat fare would probably be to my significant disadvantage if it was applied across all bus routes in the Auckland region, but I wonder whether the opportunity might exist to take advantage of the Rapid Transit Network(RTN)/Quality Transit Network(QTN)/Local Connector Network(LCN) hierarchy of routes and apply a flat fare to some of them.
The obvious candidate is the Local Connector Network, where the trips are intended to be relatively short, generally as trips which feed into train stations, busway stations or into the higher quality, faster QTN. LCN trips aren’t intended to be that long, and with integrated tickets many should end up being ‘lumped into” the cost of the longer-distance trip on the RTN or QTN. An easy to remember $2 flat fare (or perhaps more if a significant discount was given for travel via the smart-card) could prove quite attractive with travellers – especially if they knew they didn’t need to worry about remembering how many stages their trip was going to be. You just jump on the bus and the fare is $2 (or whatever) no matter how far you go on that particular bus.
There are pros and cons when it comes to such an idea. The advantages would be simplicity, an easier service to market (the Link Bus’s flat fare was crucial in its success I think) and much faster boarding by people paying cash. However, there would be some disadvantages and ultimately I don’t think it’s necessarily as good an option as zone-based ticketing – which I have advocated for previously. Here are some of the disadvantages, or difficulties, with implementing such an idea:
- Choosing which routes were “in” the flat fare scheme and which routes weren’t could prove to be quite a headache. At the moment, most of Auckland’s bus routes fit into none of the RTN/QTN/LCN split – sitting somewhere between a QTN and an LCN: long-haul services without any bus priority measures. While overhauling the bus network to fit more neatly into the RTN/QTN/LCN hierarchy would be advantageous in many ways – it is quite a long-term project and isn’t likely to occur without a bit of pain.
- The fare for shorter trips would probably have to increase, in order to compensate for longer trips. This would depend, to an extent, one what kind of routes were included in the flat fare rate. The current cash fare for a single stage is $1.80, so that would have to increase.
- Under the current system, where the bus operators have a crazy amount of power over how things work, it could be difficult to distinguish between the LCN routes/services and other services. Ideally, we would have one bus colour for feeder routes (where the flat fares applied), one for QTNs and one for RTNs or other express buses.
Ultimately though, I think such a scheme would be useful: in terms of making the whole process of catching the bus a little bit simpler and easier to do. But perhaps more significantly, something very useful that such a scheme could achieve is forcing a dramatic reorganisation of bus routes in Auckland to a more obvious hierarchical structure – which ARTA’s planning documents have talked about for around five years now, but which has hardly happened in reality. The “one size fits all” approach to providing a bus service in Auckland really hasn’t worked that well over the past few years (bus patronage is still around 2003 levels despite public subsidies for buses increasing dramatically since then), so having something that forces bus route to operate differently could be a very good thing.
In the longer term, it’s interesting to think what a flat fare (or a very simple two or three zone fare based system) could be like for Auckland. Given that every dollar spent by NZTA on subsidising public transport in Auckland generates around $4.40 in congestion relief returns for motorists (a cost-benefit return most roading projects could only dream of achieving), it could well be worth NZTA coming to its senses and ploughing big bucks into lowering PT fares in Auckland. We’d probably need a different government for that to happen though.
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Of course, you don’t have to go offshore to find flat fares; all of the Christchurch urban area is covered by one flat fare ($2.30 via MetroCard, $3.20 by cash, kids are half price) – you can even go to the airport for $2.30! Outer district trips to the likes of Rangiora, Kaiapoi, Lincoln, Rolleston, etc are covered by two more fare zones (max $4.20 via MetroCard). See http://www.metroinfo.org.nz/fares.html for more info.
This system also includes free transfers within 2 hrs of your first boarding, and paying no more than $4.60 on your MetroCard for all-day travel around Zone 1 (i.e. no further card debits after your second trip) or $23 max for all-week travel.
The same issue occasionally crops up here about the lack of cheaper fares for short trips, but they’re already pretty cheap compared with Akld/Wgtn, and it’s hard to beat the simplicity.
Your’re right Glen. Christchurch has an excellent ticketing/fare system.
It makes one wonder why it has been so difficult to do the same thing in Auckland/Wellington. My guess is that having the city council as the biggest bus operator has helped enormously.
Not only is CCC the primary operator, there’s only one council for the contiguous urban area. Auckland’s only just got to that stage, and Wellington still hasn’t. Makes a huge difference when there’s one local body area encompassing the majority of passengers, with the associated lack of hysterical raisins for different fare structures and zones.
It’s important to realise that both the costs and benefits per passenger / km strongly favour the RTN and after that, the QTN, over the LCN. Costs per passenger / km go UP in the order RTN – QTN – LCN and benefits go DOWN, though even the LCN is still better for the city than driving. All this is in various ARTA regional trasnport plans (comparative RTN / QTN / LCN bar graphs). So, if flat fares encourage longer trips on the QTN and RTN while discouraging LCN in relative terms, well, that is actually an efficient outcome. But here’s the good news, which is that facilitation of transfers by means of a flat, easily-understood fare will probably help LCN to pick patronage back up again, in a feeder / crosstown role as opposed to current Spaghetti routes.
In 98 when in the US, part of the plan was to do a day trip to Tijuana. It was a Sunday and so we walked to the train station and for $2.00us RETURN, we traveled about an hour each way. Even on a Sunday, the service was every 20 mins to half an hour and was a great way to get to Mexico and not bother trying to navigate our way through San Diego.
So what is the problem with Auckland having the same sort of fee structure.
I would see the LCN as an enable network. Ie in the long run few people would use the LCN only for a journey, but these would be feeders to the RTN especially. If this LCN service also picks up a few people going to their local shopping centre then thats all the better, but the cost needs to be very cheap for these trips to be picked up or it will only attract non-drivers.
Why not just make LCN trips, or at least journeys capped at 3 stages or something, free.
Thats an interesting idea, all the LCNs that exist currently must be subsidised to the teeth already, why not just make them free.
On a recent visit to Santa Catarina Island in Brazil, we encountered an incredibly efficient, and cheap, bus system. It consists of a number of relatively evenly spaced terminuses (termini?). A trip from one end of the island to the other, a distance of more than 80 km, can cost as little as R2.50. To achieve this, you change buses at 4 terminus stops, and providing you do not leave the terminus building, you do not need to pay any more – you just board the next connecting bus to your next chosen terminus. In fact, a journey from just about anywhere on the island to anywhere else (airport included) is the same. Each terminus building is a roofed, open-sided structure, with a U-shaped platform allowing buses to enter on one side and leave the other. Each terminus structure has a footprint little bigger than an average service station. Bus sizes matched the route and expected patronage, varying with demand.
“The current cash fare for a single stage is $1.80…”
Wow, that much. I haven’t caught a bus in Auckland in a long, long time. I remember $1.20 sections. The bus fare structure even then was steep.
“… so that would have to increase
I’m not convinced of this. In fact, I think bus prices should go down. Melbourne, for example, has a very simple two stage system. Up to two and a half hours (a 7.31am ticket is valid til 10am)transport on all modes in the large zone one will cost you $2.96 using their Myki card, and daily $4.90.
If you want to look at patronage on buses, you have to look at simple ticket prices.
I don’t think flat fares are the answer to everything – I’d like to be able to jump on and jump off cheaply – but the current system is quite broken. When you add in the other reasons why people might avoid buses (slow, uncomfortable, bad/reckless drivers, bouncing around giving a headache, lower quality of patron, poor routes) you can see why patronage has dropped radically in per-capita terms.
Yeah, flat fares are great for longer trips within the zone, but when you just want to go a few stops (say a 20min walk that you cbf/don’t have time), then it can be a bit much.
Yeah, when it’s cheaper to park than to bus people will drive. I’m in Ellerslie and it’s marginal for parking in town being cheaper, but if I were further south it’d be a no-brainer: $6 to park, plus some moderate quantity of petrol, or nearer to $7 to catch a bus or train and without the convenience.
If it’s clearly cheaper to use public transport, it will capture off-peak travellers. Right now, though, public transport is so expensive (and only going to get more so) that it’s easy to ignore the “unseen” costs of driving and say “I can park for $x, or I can bus/train for $x” instead of “I can park for $x, or I can bus/train for $x-$1/2/3”.
“public transport is so expensive (and only going to get more so.”
Why is it going to increase, and by how much? Madness prevails.
Because our illustrious Minister of Trucks says it must. He’s demanding increases on the fare-box return, and we also have to find ways to cover the $12m annual operating deficit that he’s magicked up as a way of deflecting the CBDRL issue until he can find a way to nix it permanently.
I’ve seen suggestions the increase could be 10%.
George, it’s actually up to three hours in Melbourne. A ‘two hour’ ticket starts at the next hour on the hour. So a ticket validated at 7.01 is valid until 10am.
One thing to consider with Melbourne’s two zone system is that the area covered by Zone 1 is slightly larger than the contiguous Auckland urbanised area, while zone two covers an extent equivalent than Wellsford to Pukekohe. That’s something to consider for people that advocate six, seven or more zones.
I think zone passes, rather than flat fares is the way to go. Flat fares still involve a transfer penalty unless we have a huge amount of ‘closed gate’ transfer stations like a metro system usually has.
Not sure how flat fares involve a transfer penalty. If the fare is flat, you pay one fare for the whole day and your travel is capped at that amount for the whole day, for the entire area.
If you have a smart card system, you can have a cap system where you charge fares and then stop once it reaches a pre-set limit.
I’d be surprised if Auckland needed more than one or two zones for the entire city.
The way things work here, it’d end up being a flat fare per mode, or possibly even per operator. A true flat fare is definitely heavily-addled-by-strong-narcotics material for Auckland at present.
Thats not a flat fare BrisUrbane, thats a time-and-zone based fare with a cap (which is what I’d prefer for Auckland).
A flat fare would be like the london buses: i.e. $1.30 to hop on the bus regardless of how far you go, but if you hop off and get on another it costs another $1.30.
If you have a single zone covering the entire city, then in my opinion, it is a flat fare. The idea of a different fare for a different operator or a different mode isn’t appealing. Brisbane has one fare no matter whether it is a ferry, bus or train and no matter who operates the service. Operators are paid on a per-km basis irrespective of patronage carried, which allows for greater co-ordination and coverage.
“The fare for shorter trips would probably have to increase, in order to compensate for longer trips. This would depend, to an extent, one what kind of routes were included in the flat fare rate. The current cash fare for a single stage is $1.80, so that would have to increase.”
Here’s an interesting question: should distance matter, or quality? I could argue that people further into the city actually get a better service and have more options because the frequencies of all services are much higher than the people who live out in the suburbs, and therefore a flat fare is actually fair, because the quality is much worse as you get further out, and therefore the rate should be lower to reflect that. People will pay for service if it is good.
I think the only useful application of flat fares would be for short circulators or feeders, such at The Link (obviously) or busway feeder route. But really, that would only be an interim measure before the adoption of time based zone fares. The real question for Auckland is how many zones? I would say three at most.
Main thing is to keep it simple. There are pros and cons, and ultimately it is a political decision whether
to charge by zone, distance travelled, time travelled, some combination, flat fares, fares up until a cap is reached and so on.
One ticket, accepted by all operators.
And FREE transfers!
Don’t penalise transfers- transfers are the building blocks of a successful Public Transport system!
You don’t even need a smart card to do it, but you do need a map with zones so people know.