Public transport fares have changed today and despite cash fares increasing, for the majority of users the cost of using PT has dropped thanks to an increase in the HOP discount. As I said back when the change was announced.
Overall I think this is a very good move by AT. By raising the cash fares but also increasing the HOP discount it does two things.
- It increases the differential between cash and HOP fares which will help make HOP more attractive. More people using HOP is good, particularly for buses as it speeds up boarding time.
- Over 60% of all trips now take place using HOP, that means for the majority of PT users these changes will actually represent a decrease in fares.
As of the end of May 64% of bus and train users were already using HOP cards and I suspect it has grown further during June. Since the change was announced I’ve also heard of people who have brought a HOP card simply because of the changes which are clearly designed to encourage greater use of HOP.
The adult bus and train fares changes are below.
No everyone has benefited though with most ferry fares increasing.
I think it will be a fascinating to see what happens with patronage which has been growing strongly in recent months and I hope will continue to do so.
In addition to the fare changes, last week AT quietly introduced daily passes on HOP. The daily passes work in the same way and with the same zones as the monthly passes yet oddly despite there being an inner zone there isn’t an inner zone daily pass. There also aren’t any child pricing options. The costs are:
- Zones A & B – $16
- Zones A, B & C – $22
The map below shows the zones.
It seems like there is still some way to go before this can be a product easily used by many people
Processing...
How can Glen Eden etc. fall in the same zone as Orewa/Drury etc.?
No Zone A only pass? How freaking stupid is that? Priced around $10 it could be a great option.
Completely agree, as it is $16 for travelling around the central city is very expensive.
Makes HOP look great! Hope there’s some positive advertising put out about the big discounts on offer. Makes a lot more sense to have the fares being in increments of either 50¢ or $1; will make it simpler and faster for the bus drivers handling any of the (decreasing proportions) of cash fares.
Benefit 3: Change domination requirements are reduced e.g. no need to hold 10c, on Stages 1-4 no need to hold 50c. Should reduce the need to provide any change to cash payers, or reduces complexity of change requirements.
In my litmus test of AT Hop usage on my 2 stage ride, now 3 of my 4 cash “repeat offenders” have switched to AT Hop. But alarmingly there seems to have been an increase in Stage 1 cash payers.
I spoke with an AT executive she said they didn’t introduce a zone A pass because it would be “too nice”
Better than day passes would be a daily cap. No need to try to guess before hand how many trips you might take, just AT sharing the love with their most dedicated customers automatically.
She said that would be “too cool”.
Wow if that’s the general attitude of AT management, then I think it would be ‘too cool’ to see a lot of them sacked and replaced with fresh blood. Clearly out of touch and have no idea what they’re doing. Holding back Auckland.
eh eh i made it up. But still they speak with their actions.
I agree a daily cap like they have for the Oyster card in London is a far better idea than a one day pass. There should be one day caps and weekly passes. Maybe a one day pass is better than nothing for some but why introduce a one day pass and then not give people the opportunity to purchase it online! Surely this could have been added to the option to purchase a monthly pass online. Most people begin their travel for the day from a bus stop which does not have an AT HOP topup facility. Again AT have not thought through the way to make this new product useful.
A daily cap is the best day pass of all.
Too simple really
Isn’t that map interesting? It basically shows our baby, sort-of Rapid Transit Network. You know, the really useful bit. What stands out as clearly both urgent and do-able? Extension of the Busway north. What is precisely not funded among the 800 million recently announced to spent on the motorway corridor? The Busway north, it doesn’t even reach Albany yet as shown on the map…..
What also stands out is linking eastern Auckland with the network. Easily doable too.
Bring on the AMETI busway!
Are rail transfer passengers still having to purchase two fares minus 50 cents every time they transfer? Rip off.
Just tag on when you start your journey, don’t tag on/off when you transfer, and tag off at the end of your journey. You’ll then be charged a single fare for the whole journey.
As raised in the other Day Pass articles/comments threads the Day Pass roll-out/pricing is a joke, to extend further, they failed to enable pre-purchasing of day passes (for whatever reason) over the web, which means there are very few places in ‘Zone C’ where a Day Pass can be loaded.
In other words, the Day Pass is confined to the proverbial wheelchair unless you are starting the journey from near an AT retailer or a ticket machine, nice going AT.
Yay I can get ripped off for more cash by AT now as there’s no where to top up the cards that’s open to a decently late time and web top ups by credit card don’t clear for 24 hours or more. I’d be more pro hopcards if you could easily put money on them.
I’m sorry but I don’t understand what your problem is. Why don’t you set your auto top-up threshold at $20, so that the auto top-up always goes through in enough time to ensure you’re not left with zero balance? Or $40 if you’re commuting from Pukekohe/Waiheke.
The auto top up applies instantly, and tops up if you wouldn’t have enough credit to tag on. There’s no need to set the threshold higher than the minimum, no matter what journeys you make.
Alternatively, why not just enable people to top up when they feel like it and by the mode of their choice? What about short term visitors to the city? Why is this proving so hard? It is because… you know… Auckland is just kinda shit?
Hey, I pointed out one nice thing about HOP. It’s still a mess in other ways, particularly the scarcity of locations you can top up or buy a card.
But if you do have a credit or debit card, and are not a short-term visitor, the auto topup is far and away the best of the options available to you. The topup rules are stored on the card itself, so you don’t have to worry about the delays involved in manual online topups, and you can top up repeatedly in the same day (or even the same trip). As long as you have an auto topup at all, you’ll never go to zero balance.
Mine’s set to $10 threshold (the minimum) and $20 topup, and I’ve HOPped to and from Waiheke just fine.
Of course, if your credit card ever declines the charge for an auto topup for any reason, instead of reversing the credit and cancelling the auto topup, Auckland Transport will permanently cancel your card and steal your remaining money, making you shell out for a new card if you want to keep using HOP.
Still, even if that happens once a year, it’s a way better deal than paying cash fares.
I’d like to see a biannual (half-yearly) pass, something like:
Zone A biannual $700 (instead of $840 month-to-month)
Why?? Do you want a pass for every conceivable period of time?
Why not just daily and weekly caps automatic via HOP? Why do we need anything more complex than that?
It’s a win-win. If you pledge your loyalty for a year, you get a discount, AT gets great cashflow, and can “bank” on that customer being there for a year.
Well I could ask the same about a day pass, day passes art useful to me but half-yearly? Deffo would buy that If there’s discount over monthly; much like monthly is less than 30 daily passes. Plus it’s an added convenience not having to worry about loading a pass for an extended period of time. Plus i don’t trust auto renewals as AT disables people’s cards after a while for auto-anything thanks to their broken setup.
Puzzled to see Waiheke also be included in Zone A, why isn’t it Zone B?
On the map Waiheke is labelled as Zone A, but coloured as Zone B – so who knows which zone it is in?
On the Monthly map it’s ID’ed and coloured as Zone A.
The island itself is in Zone A for internal bus services but I suspect that does not include the Waiheke Ferry service. It will be interesting to see how they deal with that in the long run. Perhaps they’ll move Waiheke to Zone B for internal buses and introduce a requirement that only A+B passes (or A+B+C) are valid for the Waiheke ferry.
In Basel, Zurich and most other leading public transport leading cities of the world one can purchase an annual pass at a very healthy discount to monthlies. Perhaps Auckland Transport could introduce this too?
And the HOP TOP UP FEE IS GONE!! Yay!!!!
Oddly enough, Singapore is introducing a top-up fee for the EZ-Link card (its version of the HOP card) when it is topped up at ATM machines, but not if it’s topped up at machines owned by the public transport operators: http://m.todayonline.com/singapore/ez-link-top-surcharge-now-effect
The day pass represents everything that is wrong with AT – they are introducing yet another pass making things more complex when they should be making PT easier to use and understand.
Get rid of all forms of passes and have daily and weekly caps on HOP!
Who makes these incredibly stupid decisions? My guess is someone at the top that earns millions a year and has never caught PT in their life let alone done any research into how successful countries run PT networks decided a day pass was a great idea (probably gave himself a bonus too)
Oh and make the price sensible too – $10 maybe.
Christchurch has had a max daily spend of $5-$6 – for the past 7 (and longer) years for all bus use.
The discovery pass, all day travel used to be $15. That was everywhere. For Auckland central only, I think after 9am it was like $9? There was also an $11 pass.
Yep, Christchurch and everywhere else outside Auckland have cheap pass options, as that is necessary to make PT price-competitive with cars. Auckland had such cheap fares until recently ($10.50 region-wide bus pass), but HOP eliminated them, a change that was delivered with the lie that it would be cheaper.
$10.50 was not a regoinwide pass, pleases stop repeatedly lying. That pass covered one company only.
The Busabout Pass was region-wide. Do your research before making false accusations.
Region-wide means valid on all services across the region, the busabout pass was limited to NZ Bus services only.
.
In other words you can’t use it on Ritchies, Howick and Eastern, Birkenhead or any of the other bus companies
Region-wide means exactly what it says – available for use throughout the region. It’s a geographical description, not a description of operators.
Well it couldn’t be region wide if you couldn’t use it out east, in Birkenhead and half the north shore and west auckland!
You could use it out east. You could use it on all NZ Bus services. I used it weekly out east (Glendowie, Panmure etc) for a couple of years, the drivers always accepted it.
Overall, a great set of changes. Fare reductions are absolutely necessary, and this pushes them back down to where they were nominally quite some time ago. In real terms, this is at least as low as they were in the early 2000s.
Bring on more change!
What is the point in having 7, 8, 9, 10 or more stages, when the day pass effectively caps fares at 6 stages?
Why do we have a “smart card” that delivers dumb results?
Easy answer: The ticketing system is quite advanced but is carrying a skeumorphic fare system.
I have a theory that humour does not require laughter.
“Re ticketing system advanced, app broken”
“We have a supercomputer, it runs Microsoft Office”
Does anyone know if people in AT are looking at implementing a cap rather than a daily pass?
Does anyone know if the day pass includes ferries (which are included on the day pass map)? As the monthly does not include ferries so it would be surprising if ferries were included in the day pass but not the monthly.