Last month, when Auckland Transport announced that it was raising rail fares (the rise kicked in this week), I was fairly nice to them about it. Of course nobody ever likes a fare increase, but in the long-run we do need to align bus and rail fares – and doing that through a slow series of increases to rail fares (while keep bus fares steady) is probably the most realistic way to achieve this outcome.
However, even working within the current fare structure I think we could be a lot smarter about how we put together public transport fares – and in particular I think we could be smarter about using fares as a tool to encourage people to use certain types of tickets, or take their trips at certain times of day, in order to achieve outcomes we want: like more patronage and a more efficiently used system. Two obvious ways we could achieve this are listed below:
- Making weekly and monthly passes better value for money.
- Creating a split between off-peak and on-peak fares.
Looking first at weekly and monthly passes, from the perspective of an agency like Auckland Transport the more people using these passes the better. There are two main reasons for this, the first simply being that such passes are usually the quickest to validate – speeding up boarding times on buses and making life easier for clippies on trains. The second reason these unlimited trips passes are greater for Auckland Transport is because they’re likely to boost off-peak public transport patronage. If you’ve already paid for a monthly pass, probably largely on the basis of getting you to and from work or university, then taking an extra few trips on the weekend, or in the evening, is likely to seem a lot more attractive, because from your perspective the trip is free. This boosts patronage on services that Auckland Transport most wants more riders – off peak – at little or no cost.
Unfortunately, over the past few years it has seemed as though the value-for-money from monthly passes has reduced, rather than increased. For some reason there are no university student discounts for these passes, and their general price seems to increase significantly with each fare rise. To make matters even worse, it seems to be harder and harder to buy the passes – with the lines at Britomart station apparently stretching right back from the ticket office to the Queen Street doors during the first week of university. NZ Bus’s new “calendar month” passes, because they’ve stupidly been introduced in the middle of the month, have contributed to putting people off monthly passes even more.
Turning now to making a differential between peak-time and off-peak fares, I’ve discussed this matter previously, with the primary justification being to “spread the load”. Every additional off-peak passenger carried is a heck of a lot cheaper than every additional peak time passenger, because you don’t need to buy more buses, more trains, build more railway lines and so forth. If passengers can be encouraged to travel during off-peak times (obviously for some this won’t be possible) through a monetary incentive then it becomes possible to both reduce over-crowding on peak-time services while also improving the cost-effectiveness of off-peak services. I would imagine that you’d need to introduce this over time, perhaps at the time of the next fare increase bump up the increase for peak time trips while also cutting fares for off-peak.
Perhaps best of all we could combine both these initiatives and offer a $99 monthly pass on all modes, but which can’t be used before 9am or between 4 and 6pm from Monday to Friday?
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I mostly agree. But I like that fairs are consistent throughout the day. It makes it all easier to understand. However your idea of an off peak pass is great. Especially if it moves students off peak hour services. Another idea is a “non express” pass for local trips.
There’s certainly a balance to be found between simplicity and offering good deals. I guess if we can simplify the fare system hugely through implementing integrated ticketing we might create a bit more of a window to introduce differential pricing based on peak and off-peak.
One thing I thought was quite bad and sneaky by NZ Bus was that after the Rail fares announced they decided to also increase the cost of their monthly passes. I think they might be trying to set the market price for them so that they get more money once integrated fares come around i.e. by then the fares are well established and they can claim hardship if AT tried to set a fare lower.
I do think it is a good idea that they don’t sell monthlies on board trains any more, it means less overall cash the staff are carrying around which can be an issue after hours as there was some cases of them being robbed at one point.
Personally I do find that monthlies are great and while I don’t use it all the time the fact that I can catch a train off peak with no extra cost is a big advantage and does make me want to use trains more, especially if going to the city or Newmarket and if the trains were faster I would definitely use the pass even more. I also find it useful for things like making short trips e.g. my wife and I might decide to go to Newmarket for dinner after work so the pass allows us to do that easily. My only complaint is that for both of us it gets quite expensive, up to $360 per month now which is easily more than car parking costs and if it weren’t for the traffic on the motorway we would probably be driving. Perhaps a family type pass for couples like us would be a good idea.
Incentive fares are helpful. It is expensive to carry air around when you could have a person paying something for a seat.
Off-peak frequency is important too. Waiting time is a cost.
There needs to be services for people to catch in the off peak to spread the load. I’m not sure what frequencies are now on the Auckland rail network, perhaps it is much improved now.
(I’m giving up on HTML-tagging!)
Wellington has a smarter train fare structure, with lower offpeak fares to provide a ridership incentive outside the main commuting hours, and a variety of monthly passes based on the zone system, many of which are cheaper than Auckland’s $115 City Monthly. A 4-zone monthly train pass is $110.40, which gets you as far as Tawa and Waterloo in the Hutt. While the simplicity of the Auckland system is perhaps a drawcard, surely there’d be better take-up of the monthly passes if they issued them zone-by-zone, so people in the inner zones would find it much more convenient to use them for commuting and associated off-peak personal travel?
http://www.metlink.org.nz/adults-2/
The Northern Pass 7 Day has a tertiary option available.