The government have confirmed the outcome of their review of the Supergold Card and the outcome appears quite good.

The changes are below.

  • Lift the moratorium on new services entering the scheme from 1 September 2015, and apply criteria for new services
  • Cap Crown funding for the scheme at $28.129 million per year for the next five years, with annual Consumer Price Index adjustments to account for inflation
  • Replace individual fare reimbursements for councils with bulk funding
  • Cap Crown funding for exempt services at their current levels, adjusted for CPI
  • Allow tendering on the Waiheke Island route where there is competition
  • Require SuperGold Card holders to purchase smartcards, such as the AT HOP card, as smartcard ticketing systems become available.

The lifting of the moratorium on new services and allowing competition for the funding on the Waiheke route is just logical so it’s good they’re being made. I actually think the biggest change will be that HOP cards will be required and that’s a really good change as it will give AT better stats as to trips being taken and should speed up bus boarding. It will likely require a bit of education on ATs part though. I would still like to see a Supergold branded HOP card with the concession pre loaded to make it even easier for card holders.

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      1. Imagine there are scenarios where super gold holders don’t have hop cards – like my grandmother if she visits family in Auckland

        1. She or her family would have to invest the $5 then. You’d only need to make one or two trips to get the money back. I think it is fair to ask for a small charge and bit of hassle up front so seniors can get their (totally free) public transport in a way that doesn’t slow down everyone else.

        2. Really? I was told by a (presumably) AT staff member at a busway station information kiosk that it wasn’t worth me (as an infrequent user, maybe once every 2-3 weeks) getting an AT Hop card. This was about a year ago. Have things changed that much?

          Also, the horror stories on this blog about significant amounts of credit being wiped-off people’s cards after only using it once, and the agony they had to go through with AT, made me not want to go through that myself. Have things changed that much?

          Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big supporter of the idea of ‘smart cards’ (I use them all the time in London and Hong Kong, because they work and are cheaper), but the disaster in Auckland has made me want to stay away. If it’s all fixed, I’ll buy myself (and my SuperGold card-holding parents) an AT Hop card tomorrow.

  1. Cant the Government just leave things as they are for the SC people – goodness they already suffer – for a change think of them not all the children, who have to earn this right

    1. Sorry but the people becoming senior citizens now are the generation that dismantled our public transport system, bulldozed homes to build motorways, created planning laws that prevented any option except fringe sprawl and created the conditions for unaffordable housing and transport while shutting down the likes of free tertiary education and a fat welfare state after they’d been through. What exactly have you earned the right to do?

      Please don’t complain that your totally subsidised public transport requires you to get a one off $10 card, most commuters pay that every day just to get to work, and certainly don’t complain about us and our children who now need to spend a lifetime fixing your mistakes.

      1. That is more the baby boomers generation (they were the last generation to have overall improvement in benefits, wealth, etc. since them most things have been cut, costs have risen etc). The baby boomers parents and their parents were the ones that built NZ while the baby boomers have taken advantage of that and to the detriment of future generations.

        1. Yes I was meaning the baby boomers, the first of them are now turning 70 years old…

      2. So make the baby boomers allies of public transport….. They still hold influence over council and government decision-making out of all proportion to their size – the baby boomers vote, turn up to meetings etc.

        If the Supergold card is for transport between 9am and 3pm when the network is not at full capacity, why not? The public network capacity (and public network CAPEX investment business cases) is set by peak hour constraints. Tying the Supergold card into the Hop card is a great move as it means this patronage can be far more effectively counted. If there are times when Supergold card holders are constraining overall network capacity (and therefore OPEX), then the stats can be reviewed and Supergold card pricing for those specific journeys adjusted accordingly.

      3. “the people becoming senior citizens now are the generation that dismantled our public transport system, bulldozed homes to build motorways, created planning laws that prevented any option except fringe sprawl and created the conditions for unaffordable housing and transport while shutting down the likes of free tertiary education and a fat welfare state after they’d been through.”

        Got any data to support these claims? It has a strong whiff of bullshit to it. At any one time a given “generation” constitutes a statistical minority of the population legally entitled to participate in the democratic process. Why has your generation not, for example, reinstated free tertiary education?

        1. Unfortunately they’ve tended to be the majority of the politicians who have been making the decisions centrally and locally for the past 20-odd years… (yes, you could probably blame their parents too)

        2. The baby boomers have been in power from the late seventies until now, they are responsible for basically all the political discourse and activity through those years. My generation is now just starting to move into the position of power. There is not much we could have done yet while our parents, bosses, councillors and politicians were all of the generation above.

          The next ten years will be the test of whether Gen Y can step up and change things for the better, or if we are destined to become our forefathers.

        3. And I sincerely hope the leaders that arise from your generation make a better fist of things than the present crop of blinkered and self-interested leaders we currently have. Unfortunately the one thing unlikely to improve is human nature, with all its virtues and vices.

        4. “The baby boomers have been in power from the late seventies until now”

          Nick,
          You are over-enthusiastic in your villification of baby boomers: In 1977 (I’ll take that as late 70s) the oldest baby boomers were 31 and the youngest were 13. Are we really to believe that all these 13 to 31 year olds were “in power” and engaging in “all the political discourse and activity” in 1977and continued to do so until now? It’s just implausible. If the baby boomers are just relinquishing this “power” to generation Y what happened to generation X? Don’t they get to be in power for the next 38 years, just like the boomers? What does a generation “in power” actually mean?

          Baby boomers (like other “generations” of the past hundred years) have always been in a minority of the electorate and the notion that a generation bulldozed homes etc, etc is nonsensical.

        5. Because by their very name “Baby Boomers” were a larger demographic than generations either side of them. This is particularly true in that Baby Boomers were the first generation in NZ to have less than 3 children per family (ie they didn’t have to provide as much for their children whilst expecting all the benefits in retirement).

    1. There’s not the capacity to add more passengers at peak, advantage of it starting after 9 is to spread the load somewhat.

      1. Works for those who live close to where they wish to get to, but for those who live in the outer reaches – where the commute is longer than an hour – it means that they can’t get to their destination for that much longer. A destination time would be better, the peak from those stations would already have left.

      2. I actually doubt that making the SG give free travel any time would have much effect on the load. Old people who are retired are arguably not that likely to leave early; those like me who still work are leaving early anyway and paying for it.

        That said, there is no argument in charity to free-ride people like me. If we are working, we should be able to afford it; if we are not, we can leave later. I only meant that I would love it if it were free all the time! But then wouldn’t we all? 🙂

        jj

  2. Is an outbreak of reasonableness related to PT occurring ?

    Should we expect more, or will we be left disappointed?

  3. Good result! Yes all supergold card holders to get AT hop card will help speed loading. One can load supergold onto AT hop card, which then does not deduct after 9am.

    1. How can one load SuperGold onto an AT Hop card? (Keeping in mind many older people don’t know and don’t want to know about using the Internet.)
      Will it actually work? (This blog is full of stories about how people are/were being charged incorrect and random amounts on their AT Hop cards, and having no luck trying to resolve this online and having to wait for weeks/months to get AT to admit it and get their money back. Has this situation finally been resolved?)

        1. Thanks Harry, will do (it’s not for me, it’s for my parents, and they’ll be glad to hear it can be done at a desk with a real person – that’s great!). (Thanks for the tip about Nick R as well, worth knowing!)

        2. Yer what now?

          Wish I had known that tip when I was trying to sort out my dads supergold hop!

      1. You can load your AT hop card at any station.I did at Papakura.You can load any amount,even under $10

  4. A solution will need to be found for services that leave just after, or at, 9am as to get SG fares on HOP the card must be tagged just before 9am (SG fare is available at 8:58). This means that there could be holdups as those wanting to use a 9am service will wait until the last minute thereby potentially holding up the departure of that service.

  5. Not sure where this leaves councils. The LTP process is over for the next three years with budgets set. This sort of detail needed to be sorted six months ago at least to give councils a chance to respond with additional funding if necessary. Instead they will have to step back and tell users that it has nothing to do with them and is just something that central government used to provide but now doesn’t.

  6. Does that mean councils (ratepayers) will have to stump up the difference from the capping? I didn’t notice anything about curbing hours of usage for SG users. Quantity available is to be opened up.

  7. Not sure how you arrived at the conclusion this is “good”. Sure the ability to require HOP cards has some operational benefit, but the elephant in the room is the funding cap limited to CPI adjustment.

    The costs of the SuperGold Card are going to escalate much more rapidly then inflation. Sure the PT trip price should roughly follow inflation but changing demographics is going to rapidly boost the number of people eligible for the card, and then there is the general increase in public transport uptake as well.

    The government have seen a pretty big funding hole in the railway/busway ahead and are ducking for cover with a funding cap, bulk funding arrangement that will dump the mess in local government’s lap. Councils will then either have take responsibility for cutting back the senior citizens entitlements or rates fund the shortfall. A classic example of central government dumping the cost of their policies onto local government.

      1. So what are the obligations on the councils going to be? Can they spend the money as they see fit, or do they have to maintain free off peak travel? This hasn’t been made clear in the press release.

    1. I don’t know who is purchasing these services from the transport operators but speaking as an ex purchasing officer, if I were part of the process I’d be telling NZ Bus etc. how much I was willing to pay. Not asking them how much they want to charge.
      This is money for nothing for Fullers in particular.

    2. I was wondering the same thing. The funding cap could see……who….paying for any overage? Or does the money run out on February 17th (say…) and the SuperGold Card is useless until April 1st (for example) when the next funding year commenced?

    3. I expect the costs to providing service to reduce over in the next few years with the new PTOM contracts and with electrification of the rail network. On the latter we’re already seeing costs fall. That means for Auckland at least the capping should probably not have too much impact. Also note that Auckland already pays to extend Supergold subsidy to cover evening peak.

  8. One thing that wasn’t commented on in your post- the move to “bulk fund” local councils, rather than actual reimbursement. Will this be cost control? What will happen if a council ‘runs out of funding for the year?

  9. One of the idiotic things about the current pricing method for SG is that it is based on a single fare.
    The fare paid for SG should be the cheapest ticket (monthly?) divided down to a single fare. In the case of Fullers Waiheke this would be approx $355 / 44 = $8.06 per trip. The current amount from memory is $17.50 per trip. If the company doesn’t want the lower amount they won’t be in SG. At present Explore are getting nothing for SG travelers $8.06 would be a great advance on that.

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