The TransLink go card system is broken, but not for the reasons Ben points out, or at least not mainly for that reason. It’s broken because the machines are too often not working (on the buses, anyway). That means that I, and thousands of other passengers each day, score free trips. Already this week, I’ve had three or four free trips because the machine was not functional, and the bus drivers simply waved me onto the bus. While I’ve been pinged a couple of times for forgetting to swipe off, or because the machine has stopped working sometime during a trip, I calculate that I’m well ahead, probably by around $30 since the inception of the go card system.
The system is also pretty easy to game if you’re travelling on the bus: touch on at the front door like a good little passenger, then touch off at the rear door as you walk down the aisle. That will charge you a one zone fare (I think) instead of the two, three, four, whatever zone fare you would have to pay if you did the right thing and touched off when you hop off the bus. Of course, I don’t do this and I don’t condone it.
All this raises a very interesting question, though. When does the city’s/state’s investment in the go card system, and the ticketing system as a whole, start to pay off? Apparently the go card system alone costed around US$95 million. My question is whether it wouldn’t be better to just remove all ticketing infrastructure and make public transport free. At least until Brisbane’s population is big enough to support a world-class public transport system. Let’s do a really naive analysis. Assume that the US and Australian currencies have reached parity. At an average of $3 a journey (adult 4 zones fare), it would need around 30,700,000 journeys to break even. With 70,000 go cards in circulation, that’s probably around a year’s worth of go card journeys. That mightn’t seem like much, but the maintenance costs will be ongoing, and, as pointed out above, a significant proportion of journeys are unpaid for. Furthermore, the US$95 million does not include the overheads for all the other kinds of ticketing, like paper tickets. Factor in the costs of employees to dole out tickets at train stations, process go card complaints, and so on, and you could be looking at tens of millions per year (at a guess).
Readers would know that my bleeding heart leftist tendencies have long been replaced by a leaning towards free market capitalism. So it may seem strange that I’m advocating free public transport. But the fact of the matter is that our public transport system is already subsidised, and it will probably stay that way for quite some time. So why add another layer of costs to a system that has to be subsidised anyway? It doesn’t seem to make business sense. Of course, I’m on the outside looking in. I have no idea of true costs, or the expected population growth of Brisbane City. But I reckon it would be a good way to get people using public transport. The only problem is, these ticketing systems are already in place; we’ve paid the upfront costs already, so I guess the government has to try to recoup these costs, and it won’t do that by making public transport free. D’oh!
12 replies on “TransLink go card: I’m ahead”
Since you mentioned not having numbers… for what it’s worth, Brisbane Transport (Bus) gross passenger revenue in 06/07 was $136m by itself, off of 63m trips. QR gross passenger revenue was 674m in 06/07, off of 58.8m trips (unfortunately these figures are for citytrain and traveltrain combined – I can’t find a break-down but I would guess citytrain revenue to be close to bus revenue, given identical ticket prices).
Brisbane Transport more or less broke even with ~$50m in subsidies, QR passenger services made about a 13% pre-tax profit. (however given that translink services are run as a joint venture with the city council, this is probably not at all accurate wrt costs to the public).
In any case, that’s a reasonable chunk of change to make up if one was to fully fund public transport (and comparatively speaking, $95m spread over however many years the ticketing system is amortized over isn’t particularly high)
Sounds about right. But where’d the 13% pre-tax profit for QR figure come from? I thought QR were running a loss on their commuter services, and wanted to concentrate on their freight services.
It’s broken for both reasons. And more.
I registered my card t’other day, over the insecure web-registration form (it doesn’t use https) and then I had to ring the call-centre to obtain a password after waiting two days.
The 13% is from page 90 of QR’s 06/07 annual report – $91M result on revenues of $647M. But as I said, they don’t separate long-haul passenger services from SEQ, so sure it’s entirely possible they lose money on SEQ and make it up in long-haul passenger service.
Of course, the fun part in all this is that the security of the things (ie MIFARE classic) has now been very publicly broken, and they’ve only just gotten the system in place…
I don’t know if I’m up to gaming the system as you describe. I get at least a free ride each week, so there’s no real need I guess.
I’m saving up for a bike.
Having used the Go card for just over a month now, I am ready to cut it up into small pieces and return it. I have been overcharged numerous times and sick of interacting with the unhelpful customer services staff.
I think I will abandon my determination to use public transport for the last few years in an effort to remove a vehicle from the streets. Well done Go Card, another ex-committed public transport user bites the dust!
[…] still ahead. But would you believe that, on the very day of my previous post about the go card, the go card machine in the bus failed to work when I needed to get off the bus at Forest Lake? […]
What do you think about the 13-12-30 TransLink call centre? How would you rate their “customer service”?
That’s a hard one. The people I speak to are always very polite, but they don’t seem to have the tools they need to answer my questions, like “where’s my bus?” In this day and age, it’s incredible that they can’t tell you where your bus is, particularly given that all buses must have GPS installed since the go card system was rolled out.
So I guess the customer service is poor because they can hardly ever deal appropriately with my inquiry.
Getting my go card registered was also a bizarre experience.
Believe me, many of the call centre operators you talk to would love to be able to help alot more. But the tools are simply not there to deliver better information. Go card refund requests are not even dealt with in the call centre itself. They are sent to a centre which no longer contacts patrons directly anyway even in extreme situations, leaving call centre staff with three sentence responses to rellay to patrons, with little explanation at all. Much of help you may be asking for is not being denied or ignored, it is simply not there.
I’ve been stung so many times with this crap system that I’ve almost given up. The Go Card helpdesk dont even attempt to help you. I’m down $20 with the trains alone. I can’t even get my $10 deposit back on the bloody card. I’m thinking about going green and getting onto the bike again.
On my recent trip to London and Chicago – I found out that if you are staying in those cities for 3 days – get the 2-Day City Pass (Go Chicago Card or The London Pass). Please visit http://www.cheapcitypasses.com for more information