A single word. The name of something exotic. Valuable. Easy to remember.
And that becomes the name of your transport card.
We long suffering public transport users in the state of New South Wales have long been promised a Transport Card. One card. A card to use on buses and trains and ferries and, yes, even on the smidgin of light rail that exists in Sydney.
It was all going to be in place for Sydney's Olympic Games. Remember them? Sydney was awarded them in 1993. The Transport Card was going to be introduced in time for the Games as part of our strategy for dealing with the massive passenger movements expected.
The Games were held in 2000. The expected passenger movements occurred. Without a Transport Card. The goodwill and patience of the transport staff and the passengers won the day. The Transport Card did not.
A card had been trialled, mainly using school children movements but each time nothing further developed. Apparently our fare structure was to blame. More complex than equivalent systems elsewhere we were told. And the bureaucracy would not abandon that structure we were told.
Money was spent on developing the card. Lots of money. Contracts were broken (cancelled?). Litigation ensued. Hundreds of millions of dollars compensation was sought. The only loser so far, the tax payer.
Eventually a new Government was elected and finally in the past year a card introduced.
Da Da! Welcome to the Opal Card!
Finally a Transport Card that is actually operational. To some extent.
Reports indicate 'only' 30,000 cards have been registered so far. That is a minority of the hundreds of thousands of daily trips undertaken. But it seems a reasonable figure to me, especially given the card's still quite limited coverage.
I can't use it yet because as a retired 'senior citizen' I am covered by the Pensioner Excursion Ticket for public transport and Opal does not yet incorporate our fare.
Still, I have visible evidence of the card through the Opal readers at my local train stations and also installed but not yet operational on the buses I use.
This is how Opal will (and won't) work on our buses. Apparently.
With each extension of the system, the current Opposition party (that is; the party that when in government failed to get it going) is seen and heard in the media criticising the card for bringing more expensive travel for some travellers when the intention is supposedly to provide cheaper travel.
At all other times we hear nothing. Neither criticism nor praise.
To my mind any government program that operates without criticism nor praise suggests that the public is accepting of it.
I won't know until I am in a position to use the card.
But finally we have an exotic, valuable, one word Transport Card of our own.
I think you still have section fares on buses rather than zones? That makes it very complex. After the debacle of the T Card, I think the quiet introduction of the Opal card is going well. In Adelaide, seniors don't pay at all off peak and weekends. In Melbourne seniors don't pay at weekends and very cheap weekdays.
ReplyDeleteI think it is section fares for buses but I've never known anyone who can explain what constitutes a section or how to calculate them. Some bus stops indicate a section number but as multiple routes stop at many of them its anyone's guess as to which section number relates to which route.
DeleteSenior Card holders in NSW can travel for $2.50 a day on public transport every day of the week (Pensioner Excursion Ticket) but can't enter/exit the domestic and international terminal rail stations using that ticket.
I hope the opal will have less teething problems that our myki.
ReplyDeleteI think it must be operating OK, Ad Rad. The only criticism seems to be about some fares rather than about how the card works.
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