NZ Bus has announced changes to the way in which GoRider monthly passes work. Basically, monthly passes will no longer be validated in the machines, just shown to the driver – and that they will operate on a calendar month basis – rather than for a whole month since purchase date. They will look relatively similar to the current “Discovery Pass” that is accepted on all modes of transport. Here’s what the GoRider passes will look like for monthly A zone, B zone and all zone:
The GoRider website also has some useful further information, and answers to frequently asked questions. A bit of thought is going into the transition to the new pass – although the new ones will not be refunded should you lose or damage the pass (a big advantage of Thales’s integrated ticket is that you can get everything back should you lose or damage your pass).
One advantage of the new passes is that boarding times should speed up – as people can just quickly flash the driver their pass rather than having to go through the whole annoying process of sticking it in the machine, waiting for it to boot up and then having the driver validate it. On the down side, I can see very long lines at various ticket agencies towards the end of the month, or most particularly on the first day of every new month. I guess people will learn to avoid this by buying them at other times.
But perhaps the weirdest thing about all of this is the timing. I thought Snapper was going to start being implemented in the next couple of months on NZ Bus buses. Maybe there won’t be a Snapper monthly option?
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Wow, this sounds all very confusing. So how many ticketing products are there?
That’s a hard question to answer BrisUrbane, as not only are their different prices for the various stages, the prices vary between operators and even within the same operators services, plus there are a variety of child, tertiary and senior concessions, special tickets, operator specific passes and so on and so forth.
My best estimate is that there are at least 271 discrete ticket products on the buses, plus a further 48 on the train system and 85 on the commuter ferry routes. That’s a grand total of 404 different public transport tickets in Auckland! And this is what they want to duplicate with the so called integrated ticketing system.
Compare this to Melbourne (a city three times the size of Auckland) which has a grand total of 32 fare products.
What! 404! That’s crazy!!!
It took them forever to get a monthly pass option for Snapper in Wellington, maybe we’re in for the same.
Or, maybe this is a strategy to keep monthly passes dis-integrated somehow? Put the best value option for NZ Bus customers outside the scope of the integrated ticket to keep them on their buses and off other companies’ buses and the trains.
I just think it is an interim step that will be used to to allow the new readers/payment machines to be brought in. That way they can start to change out the machines without as much impact and when it is all done then they can start selling the smart cards
I think you’re probably right Matt. I’ve heard that the machines are no longer serviced and many of them have problems all the time. So this could be a way of reducing the stress on them for a few months until Snapper’s up and running.
This is how they are using Snapper in Wellington and the Hutt Valley, where things are admittedly a lot simpler, as there are only two large bus operators:
http://www.gowellingtonbus.co.nz/go-tickets-and-timetables/tickets-fares.php
The other Wellington operator is Mana Coaches
http://www.manacoach.co.nz/fares/index.html
Interestingly, the two companies are prepared to work together on a joint monthly pass, although it strikes me as being on the expensive side:
http://www.manacoach.co.nz/fares/platinum/index.html
Now, one thing that helps operations is that the cash fares are in multiples of 50 cents, rather than the mishmash in Auckland. As for monthly passes, I can say from my time working in Tranz Rail, and for years before that as a commuter, is that you got used to updating your pass at the end of the month, and the train guards did allow a day’s grace on the first of the following month. The other thing that helps integration is that most areas only have the single operator, and there’s not a lot of overlap.
I wonder if a single card for the whole of NZ would be a better way to go. Buy something off the shelf like Perth, Australia did.
The Melbourne Myki has a good structure, but the authorities there really went for space-age frills and it is causing huge cost blowouts and headaches. The Sydney one took so many years to get off the ground and had so many problems just starting it up, that the government there cancelled it.
The Brisbane experience had the cards delayed implementation and took ages, errors were common in the initial phase (free rides, machines not working) and also there was too few machines at stations (so when 200 people got off a train, a huge queue formed waiting for everyone to touch-off).
NZ has a lot of tourists and is just a bit larger than the State of Victoria, Australia, where myki is being rolled out slowly state-wide. A single smart-card for NZ would allow tourists to travel from Auckland, Queenstown, Rotorua, Wellington, Christchurch using a single smartcard for all public transport.
It is important to keep some kind of “legacy” ticketing in place while the transition occurs, just so people can continue to travel when the system has teething problems. Ultimately, however, they must be phased out otherwise you will get a situation where everyone is using everything different and you are running a system that is expensive to maintain but don’t have everyone on it.
There are plans to make the cards compatible throughout NZ.
This will cost users more. Using monthly passes, I’d always wait with buying the next one if the previous one expired when a weekend or some other few commute-free days started (like Christmas). Remaining pass-less during those gaps when I would not be using the pass anyway could save almost a month’s value of a pass within a year if I planned carefully when to start my “months”. Now, calculating the best value options for me among this multitude of fares will get more complicated and will require knowing in advance how much will I use PT in any month (beyond the daily commute) which is not always easy to foresee. So I’m not happy with this change. Cool that there’ll be no machine, but how complicated it’d be to print or stamp the “valid from” and “to” dates on the new pass so that it could work like the old one?
Indeed, as a Discovery Monthly pass holder I’ve not bought a January pass at all, and instead have driven more. Had I been able to choose dates, I would have not bought a pass from halfway through December to halfway through January each year (when on my break and when my work level is low), and not used the car so much as I am doing right now.
Personally I think they should have just combined it and made it the same as the rail monthly pass which has the month and date it is valid from on it and just clipped so anyone checking it can easily see. Doing that could have been an easy way to start integrating the fares (although the bus pass shohuld have been reduced to match the rail one not the other way around)
Most commuters start work 10-17 Jan this year. By mid-Feb, there will be a bunch of angry expired monthly pass holders, wondering what to do for the rest of Feb… buy full month pass for half month use, or pay extortionate cash fares? Not fair.
I struggle rationalising the purchase of a monthly pass againist stored value. From my North Shore experience at $190 a monthly pass for all zones it is only saving me $16 a month when compared to the weekly $51.50 x 4 weeks. I just have to miss a couple of days work a month, have a public holiday, get a lift home and that “value” has been lost. There is value in monthly passes in a> getting money in early in the month and locking passengers in for the bus companies b> the possibility of promoting off peak and weekend travel by PT c> speeding up the boarding process, however I belive they need to be significantly cheaper to really get the buy in from the majority of PT commuters who are only travelling from point A to B on one bus journey Monday to Friday.