This is a Guest Post by reader and commenter Louis Mayo:
I think most readers of this blog will agree that Auckland’s public transport fare structure needs a complete overhaul and you will probably be aware of Auckland Transport’s plan to roll out integrated ticketing over the next year or so. This is an idea I have been thinking about recently, it maybe too late given that Auckland Transport have possibly already decided how integrated ticketing will work in Auckland, but here it is anyway.
All fare revenue will be collected by Auckland Transport who will then pay the subsidies out based on the length and frequency of the route, regardless of the patronage on board. This will be the only way this system would work because as you do not have to pay each time you transfer, it would be unfair if the operator who you first travelled with pocketed the whole fare even if you only used that operator for half of your trip.
Under my scheme all of the Auckland council area would be divided into three zones. The zones would be circular zones radiating from the CBD. I have chosen to have only three zones, which is less than many cities in the world. This system is a similar system to what is used in Melbourne. I think regular contributor Nick R may have suggested something similar previously.
The zones would be A, B & C or Blue, Red & Green as I have coloured them in the map.
- Zone A covers all of the Auckland Isthmus area, basically over the old Auckland City Council area, as well as stretching to the lower North Shore. The boundaries would be at Sunnynook bus station, New Lynn train station, Onehunga trains station, Westfield station and covering all of the Eastern line stops and all bus routes that operate within that area. Also covers ferries to Devonport, Bayswater, Birkenhead & Northcote point.
- Zone B covers most of the rest of metropolitan Auckland. It would cover most of the areas covered by the former Manukau and Waitakere City council’s. Bounded by Papakura train station, Redvale and Waitakere. Also covers the West Harbour, Rangitoto & Half Moon Bay ferry services.
- Zone C covers the outskirts of the city. I have stretched the zone to include Warkworth and Tuakau as hopefully these towns will be served by public transport in the future. Also covers Waiheke Island, and the other Gulf islands.
Here is a map of the zones.
There would be two types of fares offered: Smart card (HOP) and cash fares, cash would be the best option for casual users and smart card would be the best option for regular users. I will focus on the cash fares for this post.
There are two lengths of fare, 2 hour and Daily. Both of these tickets would offer unlimited transfers within the chosen period of time across the selected zone/s. Day passes would only be available after 9am to encourage off peak travel to help ease the load off services during the AM peak hours.
There are just two levels of fares offered ‘Concession’ and ‘Adult’.
People that would be eligible to pay concession fares are:
- Children under 19 years of age (under 5 free at all times).
- Tertiary students.
- Senior citizens (who would also travel free off peak).
- Additionally I propose that all disabled passengers and passengers on benefits or have an annual income lower than a decided threshold would also pay concession fares. This would make transport far more affordable for these people, as these people have been stung the hardest by high petrol prices.
Obviously all passengers travelling on concession fare may be asked to present photo ID, to prevent people from ripping off the system. Family tickets would also be offered. When adults travel with children after 9am, first child pays and then second and subsequent children are free. This should hopefully make travelling in groups better value for money. Another important aspect of the system is that fares are all rounded to 50 cent multiple, just like what Wellington does.
Here is a table that shows the proposed prices: 
That’s a grand total of just eighteen different tickets, much simpler than the millions of different tickets that Auckland currently has!
This scheme would have some great advantages, such as:
- It should be relatively easy to understand, it will mean that most passengers should know how many zones they are going.
- Compared to a flat fare system, there is still an element of fairness because your fare will increase as you travel further.
- 50 cent rounding system means that it should be easier to get out the correct change and should reduce delays.
- Gross contracting would allow well performing routes such as Dominion Rd to help pay for the less used local routes i.e feeder buses.
- Some people will pay lower fares, particularly passengers on Waiheke island ferries. However the fares are not unrealistically low in my opinion and any loss in revenue for AT would probably be offset by the gains in patronage that would hopefully occur after this new fare structure is implemented.
- And perhaps the biggest advantage, there is no financial penalty for transferring between different routes and modes of public transport. This should mean that developing a better public transport system that encourage people to transfer between services should be much easier.
However I would admit that there some possible disadvantages of this scheme, such as:
- Not as simple as a flat fare system as there are still different levels of fares.
- Would disadvantage people making shorter trips as they would have to pay higher fares. Could be described as “unfair” by some.
- Less of an incentive for operators to fill the vehicles up with passengers, as they will be paid the same subsidy anyway, but it seems that Maxx is already responsible for marketing public transport anyway.
- 50 cent rounding means that when a fare increase is needed, fares must increase by a minimum of 50 cents, which is quite a high amount.
This is merely an idea and I would welcome your feedback.
Nice idea, though I think you’ll need an inner zone as well. Those currently paying a cash fare equivalent of $1.80 aren’t going to be keen on a hike to $3.50.
I suspect you are also going to need a better mechanism around operators actually running services too.
Agreed on the ‘inner zone’. I currently pay $3 a day on my HOP for my commute from Mt Eden to the city and back. Under this proposal my fare would more than double for both scenarios (2-hour or daily). Otherwise great, simple idea – very similar to what Melbourne uses. Would also like to see the equivalent of Melbourne’s Sunday Saver ticket used on weekends (a full day of travel for $3.10) as well as standardisation of these fares onto the Night Rider routes (though not sure if that’s feasible).
The zones are CBD centric. What about those who want to catch a bus to Henderson, New Lynn or Manukau city from nearby suburbs? Only people travelling in the central suburbs get a price break?
Best to have an in zone fare the same as a current short fare, then fares for crossing 1, 2, 3 and more zones. Concentric zones also mean that Albany to Papakura is within a zone.
I think you misunderstand the structure a little. Actually people travelling in the suburbs only get the best deal because they stay in one zone, the radial nature of the zones makes it more expensive to travel in toward the city than to travel across it. A one-zone pass could get you from Henderson to Long Bay for example, or Manukau to Howick. THis is one way a zonal system could subtly change travel behaviour, making it relatively cheaper to travel locally or across town.
Albany to Papakura would require a two zone pass as the trip passes through two zones (it should actually be three IMHO).
How am I misunderstanding? The above comments are clearly calling for an additional inner zone with a price break for travelling within the inner suburbs.
Why should the fare for a CBD dweller be much less than a person living and working near a satellite centre?
if you stay within a zone you pay a 1 zone fare,that is 3.50$. If you change zone you pay more. It’s not that if you travel within zone 3 (green) you always pay 8$.
got it?
Travelling entirely within one zone costs the same regardless of which zone it is. The fare of a person living and working in the inner city would be exactly the same as that of a person living and working near a satellite centre, assuming neither has to go outside their zone for their commute.
Adding a zone doesn’t make it any cheaper, in fact the ‘CBD and fringe’ zone would be the smallest by far so residents there would have the smallest area in which they could travel on a one zone fare (although to be fair, they’d have perhaps the greatest concentration of destinations).
I am glad you can all describe the zone system to me, but it still doesn’t answer why those that currently enjoy a single stage fare and return at the end of the day should face a doubling of their daily transport costs in the above zone system. Going from ~$3 a day for 2x 1 stage fares to ~$6 a day is doubling, correct?
What was proposed in an earlier post above was an additional smaller inner city zone, where a single fare would be similar to the existing one stage fare. This still means that those travelling to work at major transit/commerce hubs (New Lynn, Henderson, Manukau City) would experience a doubling of their transport costs under this model. These transit hubs currently tend to be fare stage boundaries, so those that are travelling from either direction enjoy a single stage fare.
In London, major hubs are dual zoned so travelling to one incurs an ‘in zone’ fare rather than a cross zone.
People can currently make a one-stage trip for $1.80, but it is just a single point to point journey on one bus.
With a $3.50 zone pass they could make unlimited short trips within the two hour block (to go to appointment and return for example), they could break a trip half way (hop off to pop into the supermarket, then get on the next bus to continue) or they could link trips to achieve a journey longer than one stage to the other side of the zone (say take two buses to get several km away).
So it’s more like a time based subscription to the transit system than paying for a particular ride. Rather than focussing on the difference in cost consider the huge amount of flexibility and range of travel options and destinations it creates.
But sure in the case of a person who only ever makes a basic one-stage bus commute to a workplace and back each day they might lose out, but then again they might realise they can still use that same fare to travel around near their workplace, pop out for coffee down the road, make stops on the way home etc.
The only time based fare that has worked for me is here in Singapore, where all transfers within a journey are added together for an overall distance fare, with a maximum of 15 minutes between tag off and on for any transfer. After tagging off at the MRT stop closest to my home, I am charged a base fare and for the distance from the station of entry. I can get a meal or provisions and get on a bus, and when I tag off I am charged only the distance to my home, an additional 10c. If I am more than 15 minutes I get charged a new base fare of 71c plus the distance.
Having a 2 hour limit on a single fare casualizes the transport system beyond all sense. I would have personally benefited greatly from 2 hour fares while living in the city, but regular commuters with jobs, and anybody travelling any significant distance from their home is going to be punished. If you can’t make your journey in under 2 hours (You want to catch a bus to see a film, or a concert, or visit a mall plus lunch)you will face an effective doubling of your current fare today.
A one zone fare would mean travelling within the same zone. So someone who travels entirely in Zone B for example would be eligible to pay a one zone fare provided hey do not venture into Zone A or C.
The full fare options would actually be
Zone A only (one zone)
Zone B only (one zone)
Zone C only (one zone)
Zone A & B (two zones)
Zone A, B & C (three zones)
Zone B & C (two zones)
But there is no need to state the different options because there are only three different prices.
I gave the zones letters rather than numbers so that there would be less confusion about his.
Very similar to what I had in mind, time and zone based tickets are the way to go. Ironically we already have a quarter of this system in place with the Northern Pass.
But I agree about the inner zone, which I would put within St Lukes Rd, Balmoral Rd and Orakei Station.
I would also suspect that the outermost zone is perhaps superfluous due to the very small number of services and the wide differences in route length. Maybe better to just have three zones in metropolitan Auckland (between Papakura and Orewa) and have the regional routes pay a point to point fare from the regional towns.
As for concessions, they should only be available on Hop which could have the photo ID of the student, supergold or other entitlement printed directly onto the Hop card. Seeing as every new college or uni student gets an ID printed this could be an excellent way to roll out the Hop system. There would have to be an opt-out to use separate ID and travel cards for those that are concerned about privacy, but I expect that would be almost negligible.
Good idea about the concession fares, but I suspect we need still need to offer child fares in paper tickets.
A possible advantage of having the large inner zone as I have proposed is that if we chopped long distance bus routes into feeder services then it would make tagging off a thing of the past as buses would usually only be travelling within one zone.
So I could travel from Kawau Island to Waiuku and back again for $14.50? That compares favourably with the $29-57 one way fare from Warkworth to Bombay that Intercity buses are charging. Have you looked at the amount of subsidy required for these long journeys?
To be honest the only Gulf Island that there is a significant amount of commuters from is Waiheke. Certainly all the other services to the Gulf Islands could just run commercially using whatever fares they choose.
Fullers service to Waiheke is not public transport but a private monopoly. It cannot be made to form part of any integrated fare system, unless it is in its financial interest (i.e. you didn’t see them turn down the Supergold card subsidy) and comes with no strings attached (i.e. no tendering of the route or subsidy to a competitive service).
A $14.50 daily charge for Waiheke commuters isn’t feasible, our monthly passes – which includes access to ferry, Waiheke bus, NZ Bus and Howick&Eastern Bus services – is about $10 a day at the moment. A 2-hour pass would barely let you off the wharf downtown so that is completely irrelevant for islanders.
Of course, day trippers would get a bargain: they currently pay $35 for a day return on the ferry alone. I doubt Fullers would want to lose that cash cow!
Fullerswatch: http://fullerswatch.blogspot.com
Just about every peak hour bus route is exactly the same.
There would be no choice. All services would have accept this system regardless of their wishes or they would not be allowed to operate. I’m pretty sure AT own the terminals at either end of the crossing, so another operator would have to take over if Fullers refused. I can see your concerns about the prices, day trippers would get a much better deal with fares over halved, this should provide a good boost to the local economy. Commuters would probably be better off on the smart card option, which I will post about tomorrow hopefully.
AFAIK, Fullers and Auckland Council co-own the downtown ferry terminal. In the past this has been the major obstacle for competitor services to use the main piers. You may have noticed the midget boats that ply the Waitemata use Piers 3 and 4. When Pacific Ferries operated 10 years ago they were denied access to Piers 1 and 2 – and on their first sailing to Waiheke Fullers had placed their boats on all piers at Matiatia. Such is the rapaciousness of a company wanting to preserve its monopoly. So good luck to you forcing Souter Holdings to drop its tourist fares. Fullers is not accountable to anyone except its shareholder for fare and sailing policies.
As I said under the new Public Transport Operating Model they would be forced to adapt the new fares anyway.
Louis – admire your effort but I completely disagree with with need for zones at all. Why not just use a fixed-fee + distance based fare? Avoids issues with zone boundaries altogether.
Distance based fares sound awfully complex. You could end up with a huge number of fare possibilities Plus they punish longer trips that generate greater congestion relief benefits.
Flat fee + distance makes longer trips more economic. In Singapore, I am charged around $1.20 for a single stop MRT ride, but pay $1.90 for my full commute, a 37km MRT + bus ride. Distance is charged as the crow flies as well, so those who transfer to circuitous bus feeder routes get a break on their fares.
Other way around. Flat fee plus distance based component means that the per-km cost declines the longer you travel – hence PT competes more with long distance trips.
In terms of complexity, I don’t get your drift. You just rely on stored value to get around, no need to specify stages etc. Once you’ve made a trip once you get to know how much it costs and you see your balance every time you swipe off.
Easy as pie and definitely less complex that coming up with stages that create all sorts of arbitrary boundary effects …
OK point taken, if the initial amount is fairly high and the per km amount fairly low. By complexity I mean not knowing the price of a trip when you get on.
You handle that by having distance-based available only for HOP. Cash fares would be a fixed price based on time, or a single journey. If HOP fares get capped for a day at less than the highest-price cash fare, there’s still an incentive to use HOP even for long-distance trips.
How would distance fares work in cash fares? I could see that it would work on HOP but it wouldn’t work for cash fares as it would simply be too complex if you were doing exact distance fares. Or else you could do it using “blocks” of distance, such as what CityRail in Sydney does. But even that is quite complicated and if you have to use an online calculator to work out the cost of your fare, I think it is just too confusing.
This is actually very similar to the system Vancouver has. They only have three zones: one for the city of Vancouver itself, a second zone for the cities adjacent to Vancouver (Burnaby, Richmond, North Vancouver and most of West Vancouver), with zone three for the cities and towns beyond that (Surrey, Delta, White Rock, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows and a bunch of smaller places). Their integrated ticketing technology was very high tech – your paper bus ticket was time stamped, and you just presented it to the bus driver when you changed buses. (From memory Vancouver gave you a 90 minute window to transfer vehicles).
Vancouver also had that other innovative and ground breaking piece of ticketing technology known as “the monthly pass”, available in one, two or three zone flavours, and good for unlimited public transport use within the designated zones.
Melbourne’s passes couldn’t be simpler. A daily pass costs the same as two 2-hour passes but is valid all day and night. In fact if you use two 2-hour passes on the same card in the same day, it automatically upgrades to a full day pass. A weekly pass costs the same as five daily passes, effectively giving you all weekend to travel free.
Living there I just bought a $29 weekly pass each week and could travel on any tram, train or bus, any combination of services to anywhere, whenever I liked for as long as I liked (well except the outer suburbs of zone two, but there’s not much out there but sprawl and it’s a simple zone 2 upgrade anyway). No cash, no tickets, no drama, just hop on. In fact with a validated weekly pass you don’t even technically need to tag on or off, as long as the valid pass is in your possession.
That is the ideal: simple, affordable and as little hassle as possible. Weekly/monthly passes are great because you buy them to cover your commute and travel any other time is effectively free.
You need more zones. You are currently condensing a 3 zone trip (north shore to city) into just one zone. A lot of students/pensioners do very short trips (suburb to neibouring suburb – ie to the local school or supermarket). Likewise, it the city, you need to encourage people to use public transport for short trips (ie newmarket to parnell or city to ponsonby).
Concessions should only be on cards and cash fares should also force people to get a card (from memory, in London it is twice the price to use cash on buses).
Try again with that and some of the other suggestions above and it will be a lot more reasonable.
The monthly passes in London are also the only way to go. Choose the zones you travel in and you dont ever have to worry about the cost of travel.
That’s a three *stage* trip, not three zones. Zones work differently.The point with zones is you have unlimited travel within the zone for two hours. So your pensioners or students doing short trips to the supermarket could go, do their shopping and come back on the same ticket.
FYI the only current zonal system we have (Northern Pass) has only two zones between Albany and the CBD). Also if we look at the nearest purely zonal system, Melbourne, they have only two zones covering a transport system that is 70km long and 50km wide. By comparison the whole Auckland urban area could fit within zone 1 of the Melbourne system. I wouldn’t advocate a single zone, but I think two to three is about right.
In that case you need a bigger subsidy. Otherwise short trips are discouraged (unles you get in and out in 2 hours). How do you compare London’s zone system to Melbournes.
i’m not sure if this is true, but our nearest “purely zonal” system could be Christchurch? Of course it is a smaller city so it was probably easier to implement zones there rather than in Auckland, but when I was living there the zone system really worked well with the metro card. 2 hour flat fee ($2 something) in zone 1 (pretty much all of Christchurch except Rangiora and Lincoln from memory) and would only charge you a maximum of 2 trips per day, and 10 trips per week (ie. if you commute Mon – Fri then all weekend trips are basically free).
Perhaps the question is what is the priority for looking at fare structures – do you want to favour the regular Mon-Fri commuters who go to the CBD or do you want to favour the shorter/suburban trips? With a zone system i’d say the commuters would get the best deal, while a base fare + distance charge would be more fair overall and, to me, makes sense for a city like Auckland that is more spread out (than other NZ cities at least).
The CBD is by far the primary single destination for public transport users, because of the concentration of tertiary education. University of Auckland alone has over 20,000 FTE students across the City and Grafton (medical school) campuses (it also has Tamaki, Epsom, and Takapuna within the Auckland Council area), never mind AUT and all the other boutique providers. That’s without getting into staff, either, or all of the private industry.
A system that is weighted towards weekday trips to the city is one that’s based around the majority users. Even if we manage to achieve a complete switch in how people travel around Auckland there is still the reality that most trips are centred around employment or education. Making public transport the default choice for getting into the CBD tackles at least 10% of regular travel.
At the moment I pay $180 a month from Manurewa to Britomart.
Under your plan I’ll be paying $242.00 – about 30% more.
Forget working – I’ll go on the dole because that is far too much to get to/from work!
The proposed fares are cash fares. I assume the proposed Hop card fares would be substantially lower.
The HOP discount would have to be huge. Right now it’s 10%. Even the 40% student discount wouldn’t shave much off that $180 if the starting point was $242. I think the difference between non-concession HOP and cash is too small, personally. I think it needs to be at least 25%, to encourage uptake.
I agree that the Hop discount should be large. It used to be 50% for the oyster card in London on buses (1 quid vs 2). That way, if someone is planning on using PT more than once or twice, it makes sense to get a hop and speed things up for everyone.
I’m not sure what kind of ticket CHris currently uses but, assuming it is just single tickets or a multibuy, you have to take into account that with a zone system on which you could travel for a couple of hours, you are buying a more valuable ticket — it may end up getting you more than the current $180 does.
Still thinking about how the HOP system would work, might have to do a follow up part 2 post if I have the time and admin’s okay with it.
Go right ahead, this post has certainly stimulated some good discussion.
Still working through exact details but Ithere would be a better option using the smart card system than what Chris R describes, I don’t imagine he would have to pay anymore than what he does now.
Given that we’re already heavily overcharged, you should be looking at how to reduce what he pays. $180 is nearly double the cost (EUR49.50) of a Vienna-wide all-modes monthly pass, as one example.
Overall it is the right idea, but I agree more zones are needed. But if you can keep Birkenhead in Zone 1 that would be awesome
If you run a 10km radius around Aotea Square, it fortuitously lines up in every direction with a natural barrier: the Tamaki River east, the Mangere inlet south, the Whau river in the west and the inlet between Greenhithe and Beachhaven plus the Rosedale ponds in the north.
This creates a perfect ring to have the zone boundaries, the various bodies of water almost eliminate zone boundary issues everywhere except at Otahuhu, New Lynn to Blockhouse Bay, and Constellation to Mairangi Bay.
Exactly.
This system seems fair, but I would also allow the zones to overlap like in London or Melbourne. I would suggest that Albany, Papakura and Kumeu be in both zone 2 and 3; and Takapuna, Birkenhead shops, New Lynn, Pakuranga, Panmure, Onehunga, Mangere and Otahuhu be in both zone 1 and 2, so as to not disadvantage people who live near the zone boundaries too much.
How do you make a short journey across a zone border, such as New Lynn to Avondale, without paying two zones?
Good points. I could see this being a potential problem. I think the answer is for the zones to overlap each other a bit. For example although the boundary may be at New Lynn, if you were travelling from the CBD on the western line then you could go as far as Fruitvale Rd on a zone A ticket, but if you were coming from Swanson then you could travel as far as Avondale on a Zone B ticket.
The border regions would be in both zones. New Lynn for example is ideally placed to be the main interchange on the western border and would be accessible on a single zone pass from each side.
In Melbourne the zones overlap for about three stations, and an equivalent distance on buses (all trams are within zone 1). You can still get a little stung if you happen to be going just four stops along right over the border… but that’s no worse that the issue today of going just over a fare stage.
Maybe I´m being naive but surely we should have Auckland Transport out consulting on the planning for integrated ticketing and the fare structure? Personally I think the zone system works well, having grown up in London and very much use to travel cards. That said the distance travelled mode suggested by Stu D has its merits too. I hope AT are reading this very closely as it offers some positive ideas for to get Hop is fully up and running
AT have not engaged whenever this has come up in the past. They’re really playing a dumb game, IMO, by not starting the public discussion about what the full integrated fare structure should look like when it’s finally released
I think it’s great, just ad an inner zone as well. I hope this can be rolled out like London where you can buy a day / week / month / year worth of zones then I’d use my car much less.
If we look at the Northern Pass, we have the ‘upper zone’ north of Constellation and Mairangi Bay, the ‘lower zone’ south to the harbour, and a de facto city zone that extends along the rail lines to Kingsland, Ellerslie and Orakei.
I say basically run with that and extend it across Auckland. That would give a city zone around the CBD and fringe suburbs, an inner zone covering the ithsmus and lower North Shore and an outer zone in the north-west and south-east.
I use a rail all zones monthly.
I dont think education is the primary reason for our CBD centric system…apparently, students only make up 26% of NZ Buses auckland patronage- most passengers are CBD ‘White Collar’ workers according to their stats. I believe these workers don’t drive to the city because of parking hassles, traffic, and the fact that there is usually a pretty frequent and direct PT service.
I do think having Universities in the CBD does help create a tidier system, but it isnt a primary . many routes do very well even though they do not serve students at all nor pass close to the tertiary area
Auckland Transport really need to get on and start consulting on this. Fare caps could also be thrown in the mix.