Great post. I think you’ve nailed the key elements

A couple of thoughts on it

1. There is a tension between public transport capacity at peak and the revenue neutral argument you made. In short, the telcos are able to run different usage deals to shift traffic off the peaks as the networks are build for the peak. In effect at off peak, the capacity is still there and getting people to use it in off peak also drives up higher margin calls at peak. Also be careful of comparing the two. At peak in a mobile network you just press send again if your call didn’t get through due to congestion. Missing your bus hurts a lot more than that. In a PT scenario you have significant variable costs in operating your services at ‘peak’ for the whole day – in particular salaries and fuel – so I don’t think you’ll end up with your full capacity to use to make these off peak type deals. Personally, being able to tell someone intelligently that if they chose some other options than their regular service, they’d end up with better connections, shorter transit times or even a better chance of a seat, might be more appealing.

2. Revenue neutral or better – this is a major for Auckland. The current RPTP predicts a deficit of $60m despite government funding, increased fares and increased patronage. Its going to be hard for ARTA to manage transfer discounts, capping etc unless they charge more, which will obviously not help increased patronage. Somewhere either subsidies for operators are going to drop, services will need to be cut or more funding sought from the government. Given NZTA’s signal that it wants to increase farebox recovery. Luke’s point is a good one – there needs to be a path towards this. The problem is that the current plan says that over 10 years it won’t happen.

3. Risk management – we made submissions on the RPTP on this. You have to nail down your future fare policy as fast as possible prior to implementing a new system. Our understanding of the current plan is that ARTA will simplify the existing stage based policy (basically remove some products), implement the new system, sort out a zone based system as you have described, and then reshape the technology to cope with this. It goes against good IT project deployment practices which are simple – get your scope sorted out, build it once, build it right. From talking to the TTA last year who deployed Myki in Melbourne they were very clear – this was the number 1 reason why they were so late and overspent so much. In effect they had to build their system twice.

Miki
CEO
Snapper

In the case of Auckland, there will be some patronage growth if the financial penalty to tranferring is removed. There are plenty of people around the central area particularly who could make an easy connection to improve their trip. Say someone coming in from the suburbs who is heading to Newmarket or Ponsonby rather than Queen St, right now they might baulk at paying a couple of extra bucks to go a few more kilometres.

However for the most part having a penalty-free transfer ticket isn’t going to make connections magically work for people, it’s not going to co-ordinate the timetables, it’s not going to make the routes link up at the same stop, it’s not going to improve the frequencies so people don’t have to stand at the bus stop for twenty minutes. A few people might be a bit more willing to overlook these problems with a free transfer, so it is an incentive in that regard, but on the whole just removing the financial impediment to transferring isn’t going to make connecting significantly more attractive on most routes.

So getting rid of the transfer penalty is the first step and a very worthwhile one, but unless they back it up with the right routes and timetabling it isn’t going to make a revolutionary change.

Still, it (integrated ticketing) has a lot of power for benefiting patronage. Whether you remove an impediment or provide an incentive is, at the end of the day, almost irrelevant, as the two things can both work equally powerfully.

And from a more corporate viewpoint, making it as easy as possible for the customer to part with his money (in this case to buy PT services) was always a smart marketing thing.

The only beneficiary of ticketing is the operator and the state, the ease of collecting there fares is a core part of business efficiency while ticketing policy can be used to manage demand…. however right now in Auckland arguably the goal should be to grow demand in any form.

http://www.arta.co.nz/publications-projects/projects/auckland-integrated-ticketing-system.html

It doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that a true integrated fare system is going to be established. Aspects of an integrated fare system are alluded to, but it is pretty non-committal. I guess it will come down to negotiation with the private operators.

Am I being too pessimistic??

What would be the cost of making trains and buses free to everyone on match days? You could paint it as an act of contrition for poor performance in the past, as was discussed a few days ago here.

The rest of your post is a pretty good summary of what is needed. But I don’t think the implementation should be hurried for one special event. In terms of the number of people who use public transport on a regular basis, the added number visiting from elsewhere for a few rugby games is insignificant. Being a laughing stock (which I’m not convinced is true) isn’t a good reason to risk a rushed and botched implementation, or to drive up costs because you need to throw bodies at a quick implementation. The project is too important to be risked like that.

Myki has been running for six years now (since tender) and it still has problems. Can Auckland do it in two? Maybe, but is it worth the risk?