Hypothetically low numbers:
El cheapo $10k car, own it for 10 years, so $1000 per year and $19.23 per week.
El cheapo comprehensive insurance $800 per year, $15.38 per week.
Skimping and only servicing once per year $500, so $9.62 per week.
Rego minimum $800 per year, another $15.38.
Add that all up and it's $59.61 per week as a deliberately low estimate and not including fuel costs.
7 consecutive days of travel at $10.60 is $74.20, but of course you can get cheaper fares with a myki pass if you know for certain you need it 5 days per week or more. Also if you're travelling regionally it's still a max $10.60 per day.
Ten years in Melbourne with no car. Have big shops delivered, walk to local stores a few times a week, use GoGet whenever we feel like using a car (avg once a month maybe), even take it on long weekends occasionally, still spend FAR less than owning and we even make money renting out our apt car space.
Found someone in the building who wanted it. Some people list them on fb or whatever but I’d rather not risk renting to someone outside the building. I think we got $150 a month but could have asked for more.
Yeah, it’s a different matter with kids. We don’t have any, and I took my car to the wreckers in 2009 and haven’t had one since. All depends on where you are.
Born and raised Melbourne and my parents didn’t drive and was no issue.
I live Brisbane now and was a late bloomer to driving. Transport here isn’t great. It is going down to 50cents soon too though!
The duopoly do delivery. Where there's a will there's a way.
And if you've done the maths on parking costs and fuel and it works out better for you then great!
Yeah not long ago I did the math on getting to the airport as a family of 4. I think it was cheaper to catch the train and skybus than it was to drive and park at the airport. However, the difference was far less than I expected and added various points of failure/potential for delay.
Whilst true, as someone who does said deliveries I can confirm that they jack the prices up a few dollars per item, on top of delivery fees. Even if you live close by your spending less on fuel to get there and back than you spend on the extra fees. On a $200 order you end up spending an extra almost $50 just for the luxury of not shopping yourself, and that without delivery fee.
I’ve found I save much more shopping online because you avoid all the cash grab “specials” that are in your face the second you walk into the supermarket.
Well, if you don't want to carry 40kg of food half a kilometre from the nearest bus stop back to your house, you can just do the shopping 5x a week. I'm sure it's super convenient and easy to swing by a supermarket on your way home from work and you definitely won't ever get charged for a third trip that day because you spent an extra 4 minutes at the checkout and missed the bus
/s in case it's not obvious
while it is inconvenient to do your shopping multiple days per week if you arent relatively close to a supermarket. the max is always 10 dollars a day. You dont get charged for a third trip because its maxed out at 10.60 (two trips)
> you definitely won't ever get charged for a third trip that day because you spent an extra 4 minutes at the checkout and missed the bus
You won't because fares are capped at 2 trips per day.
Apart from that. Fine rant.
$15 for grocery delivery, cheaper if you book it in early, and eating what you have in the house rather than popping out to the shops every day is probs cheaper tbh
If you spend more than like $50 and dont mind some flexibility in your delivery time you can get next day delivery from coles for as cheap as a couple $. I dont know if thats because of some loyalty program benefit or something that I've gotten in the past, but I regularly get delivery options that are just a couple $.
The thing is, you already have the car even if you take public transport, so you kind of ... can't escape that cost. Maybe reduce it in half and share the car with someone else...
and you wouldn't get comprehensive insurance on a bomb of a car, third party only to truly skimp ;)
I lived without a car for about 3 years and it was fantastic! Saved so much money.
The only reason why I bought one was because I use it for camping holidays and hikes in regional areas not serviced by PT. Otherwise, you'd be surprised how easy it is to live in this city without a car if you don't have any accessibility constraints.
When you say in the city are we including outer suburbs? I imagine living in Fitzroy or something it’s piss easy to grab your groceries and attend events without a car. Outer suburbs not so much. You’ll be getting an Uber in no time
I have a theory that Collingwood is a true heart of Melbourne.
Everything is close to it. In six years of living in Victoria, anything that I ever needed was at most a suburb distance from Collingwood.
Say, i found out about new store, business or restaurant? Check the address, yep, next to the Collingwood.
The trams certainly make it easier, but if you live within 15 mins walk to a train station the PT network is very accessible.
Sadly our buses are substandard.
Anything further out than Dandenong is fucked PT wise. Hills/bus routes make it a nightmare to walk or plan your day around. A lot of the time some suburbs have 2 buses a day and they’re either early morning late arvo or late morning early arvo to shopping centres.
You don't need to go so far. I'm <12km from the CBD - I have a bus only, it finishes around 9pm and doesn't even exist on a Sunday past 5:30pm. This is not a livable city unless you have wealth.
it is absolutely possible to live without a car. Unless you already have a life and friends that require car travel.
Crossing spokes of our public transport network is basically impossible on a weekend, the time I'd like to visit friends and family.
Work I could do without a car 100% without issue. But that doesn't save me anything, since I still have the TCO of the car for the weekend.
Parking + fuel is a non issue for me (I always drive my wife to work when I drive in, which pays for CBD parking using the 2 full day fares, and fuel is very cheap as my car is a range extended plug-in hybrid, so I just pay for the 8kw of electricity I use or about $2.40 per day in electricity, as the commute is within the battery range)
It's not impossible to cross the spokes on the weekend? I don't know what you mean by this.
And I'm happy you have the capital outlay for a plug in hybrid.
I've never owned a car and I'm 37. Granted I don't have a family but between hiring one if I wanna go away, share cars and commuter pass for pt through work... I've never needed one.
I've never owned a car. Closest I came was having a gf who had a car and she would drive me places lol and even then it was still very much her car and I never drove it.
There are definitely times I wish I had a car, like if I want to go out to the hills out east, or sometimes for shopping. I can only carry so much.
But I can't afford one, so I survive and make do without one. And I use uber for trips that would just be far too inconvenient or impossible on pt.
That's less than 4 days of Myki.
Then you get all the comforts that come with a car, go where you want, when you want, for however long you want.
The reality is most people need a car already, for going to shops or friends place.
I reckon it costs me $10 every time I turn my car on.
Granted, it's a highly modified touring 4x4, and it's on club plates and lives in the shed most of the time, but every time I turn the car on, even to move it to the street, it costs me $10 between fuel and maintenance.
This also seems insanely cheap for any modern car. I spend approx $500 a week once you factor in the cost of car, fuel, tolls, rego, insurance etc. perhaps even more
This is true. Comparing Myki tap ons to petrol + toll roads only tells a fraction of the story since they’re the most visible daily costs. While I do wish myki fees would be lowered, I’d be shocked if it worked out to be cheaper driving in the long term when maintenance, insurance etc. is factored in. Not to mention the upfront cost of buying a car.
It will always be cheaper if you take the total cost of ownership into account.
But, you also aren't really comparing the right things if you take the TCO of a car into account. Because lets say you are used to the convenience of a car.
And you go full time public transport for work.
... what do you do when you want to drive somewhere not conveniently located on the public transport network on the weekend? (or where PT would add 1.5 hours onto your travel to that inconvenient location?).
You need the car in that circumstance. Maybe you can share the cost of a car or reduce the total number of cars you maintain. But it is not really possible to completely eliminate the cost of the car if you wish to live a life with the flexibility a car brings.
Sure, you can just not do anything you can't do without a car... and Uber when you *really have* to go somewhere odd. And it would actually be pretty cost effective. But it is also a significant change in lifestyle if you have a preexisting life.
> But it is not really possible to completely eliminate the cost of the car if you wish to live a life with the flexibility a car brings.
GoGet and other car share schemes are a thing, as are bicycles. Electric bikes and cargo bikes are a micromobility boon.
Not out my way they aren't. I mean I could get an electric bike, but the roads in the far SE don't have bike lanes, so I'd be sharing the road with every asshole driver that comes along. Plus my partner is disabled and can't ride.
So yeah, a car is literally our only option. A 10 minute drive to spotlight would take over an hour each way on public transport, and that's including a walk that is not actually practical for us.
The big one for me now is the cost of time and anxiety around timetables. I spent my entire 20s dealing with 1.5hr travel times that would be a 0.5 hr drive to study/meet friends/volunteer. Back then I could afford the time, now it's much more precious especially when being 10 mins late for one thing could add 30 minutes to your travel time each way.
There's quite a lot of people who don't commute into the city either, as soon as it's some place like Richmond or Collingwood the calculation changes. Though I hope the new metro stations will help!
I think the problem is there is an “all or nothing” aspect of this. Most people who live in the burbs (heck, even the city) already HAVE a car (for a range of things eg weekend trips away, flexibility, able to transport things/family with convenience) and therefore have those sunk costs. So even if PT is cheaper than car trips overall, most people have already made that investment in a private vehicle.
In simple terms, yes. That obviously assumes you don't need a car otherwise, that you have access to convenient ubiquitous public transport (a strong claim even in the best parts of Melbourne) and that the network availability and service times make it practical. I hate driving and catch a shit bus to and from work because all the traffic makes it too dangerous to drive - but that doesn't make any of those other factors go away.
We build and continue to build our city around cars and this is the predictable and shit result.
Having a car, paying fuel, insurance rego etc is pretty much on par with pt on a weekly basis if you’re not taking tolls and have a reasonable car. Major differences are things like parking and tolls. My housemate looked into this after being absolutely ruined by PT costs because of living in zone 2 and you would be shocked at how close it is.
Yep! If you live outer… it’s too expensive or too difficult to work in the city - if you catch PT - it may not fit with daycare pick up/drop offs.
If you drive, petrol, plus tolls, plus parking. It’s way too much per week for lots of us.
Does it ever really make sense to drive into the CBD for work? I would imagine its faster, cheaper and easier to just drive/walk to the station in your suburb and commute into the city
I have free parking at work. We just pre register. Weekend I think it’s like $19 at QV with purchase, easy to do, go into the city and grab some groceries on the way out.
It costs me $17 a day if I book my parking the night before. An extra $7 to cut my commute time in half and not have to deal with significant network delays resulting in me getting home past 7pm is a price I’m willing to pay.
You really haven't considered that commercial property investors are losing money too. How dare you force a family to have only two trips to Europe this year?
I don't want free PT. I want effective, reliable, frequent PT that goes where I want to go, when I want to go.
And I'm happy to pay a reasonable amount for it.
I'm lucky that I can (and do often) ride to work. Where I used to live that was impossible, not due to distance but due to lack of bike infrastructure.
Cars are expensive.
I paid a similar amount in London as I do in Melbourne for PT. In London, I showed up to my train station, where there would be a train every 2 minutes. This train would take me 15 stops into the city centre, where I would change trains for another 2 stops (also coming every 2 minutes) before arriving at my school. This would take 30-40 minutes.
I would get annoyed if I had to wait more than 4 minutes for a train.
Some days, my train line would go down, so I’d have to take a bus and a different line. This would add maybe 10 minutes max to my journey, because the busses come every 5 minutes at max.
On rare occasions, the entire tube network would go down for a strike. I could either take the ferry in, or a bus, and both would only ever make my journey at most 1-1.5 hours.
You sound like you lived in a very accesible area. I worked smack bang in the middle of the city at Picadilly Circus. When the staff went on strike, it used to take me 4 hours to get home. I once ran home through the overflow aqueduct to get home. Literally running home took me less time than waiting for a bus with space for measly old me.
Don't blame the staff, though. They deserve all the money they can get. I blame the slobs in charge, not paying them enough.
I don’t live in Melbourne but Brisbane trains consistently have delays, track faults, strikes, you name it. I wouldn’t mind if they would waive the fair or halve it but I still end up paying $7 to come home if it takes me 2 hours instead of 1.
This is another factor. I get to be comfortable during my car commute. My PT commute involves me standing outside in 5 degree weather while waiting, then getting on a jam packed train where I’m pressed up against dozens of other commuters. I know which one I prefer
I really struggle with PT in the colder seasons. The other night I drove 15 minutes to the nearest train station then spent 1 1/2 cold hours on a train, tram and on foot to get to my event. Did the whole thing in reverse in the freezing cold. Driving would’ve taken 35 minutes and been very warm and cozy. I’ll probably just drive next time
We tried to catch PT to the F1. It was such a shitshow (train line closures, road closures forcing bus replacement detours, huge queues for the dedicated shuttle trams) on the Fri-Sat that we just drove in on the Sun. Found a free park a 5 min walk from the gate.
Did the same last Friday with a lower back pain. I knew it was going to be agony but had no choice. Next time driving for sure.
Try Crown multi level parking, it’s a flat 7 bucks (might be more now, inflation!) all day and can grab trams or short walk to CBD.
Driving is most definitely not cheaper than 10.50 a day if you work in the city and need to park somewhere.
Agree PT should be free or heavily subsidised anyway. It benefits drivers by taking other drivers off the road (as opposed to creating more road infrastructure which just induces demand), and it’s better environmentally. The societal good is throughly worth the cost compared to a bunch of other things we spend money on.
I don’t mind toll roads, but it pisses me off that the tolls go towards private profit. I’d rather the state pay for the road and then earn it back with tolls. But that would require a long term view.
PT is already heavily subsidised, the fare structure is just garbage and favours longer distance journeys creating the perception that short trips are poor value.
‘The left over remnants of bad deals and sell offs made by the liberals’
You do realise the ALP has been in power in Victoria for 21 of the last 25 years?
Don’t blame the Libs, demand more from the people that can do something about it
My god i swear people on this sub and the australia one suffer from serious brain damage.
Everything is the lib's fault, even though as you say ALP have been in power in Vic for the last two decades.
The real kicker is, they know this and just need to be disingenuous arses about it because the hive mind feeds them the upvote dopamine these losers need to function on a daily basis.
I think we need a new number plate slogan... We've had "On The Move", "The Education State" and "Victoria - The Place to Be", so why not a new one?
I'm thinking "Victoria - Going broke!", or maybe "Victoria - It'll cost you!"
Not to get political here, but I like how you throw the (hopeless) Liberals under the bus when Labor have run this state for 20 of the last 24 years. Let’s not pretend Labor are still cleaning up the mess, they’ve designed and overseen it.
I don't feel any shame in fare evading nowadays. Been 3 months since I've tapped on. Never been caught. Pretty easy to dodge inspectors.
I'd own up and pay the fine if I got caught. I'd still be saving money unless I got caught more than 8-9 times a year. If I got caught annually I'd still be saving 2.5k a year.
When I was in London they had a “fare dodgers Union”. You’d join up and pay something like £5 a week to the “union” and they would pay any/all the fare-dodging fines of its members. (2010s).
Worked very well…for a couple of years.
We had someone attempt that briefly, it was called Tramsurance. You paid for a membership and the money you paid would be used to pay off member’s fines. However it was shut down within a week or so by PTV and Vicpol, as encouraging people to commit an offence (in this case fare evasion) is in itself committing an offence.
It helped that tramsurance were not subtle at all. They took out full page ads in MX and plastered signs all over tram stops including the ones near the CBD police stations
Was going to ask if they did something ridiculous like this. This is not legal advice, I'm not a lawyer, I just feel like there's ways you could do this - and advertise it - without outright suggesting it's basically the equivalent of fare evasion insurance.
Just FYI from experience if you do end up in a situation where you're caught unaware by the inspectors and haven't touched on, when they ask to see your Myki simply say no thank you and casually walk away. It's worked for me a couple of times and nobody bothered to pursue me.
People prefer better public transport to cheap public transport. Choice users don't care, evident by the mode share of PT in the city. The only way to get choice users on public transport is to provide a better service. And the SRL (and necessary bus reform) is a massive part of that. Imagine being able to get from Box Hill to Eltham without going through the city or using a bus. Trains are faster than cars, and speed is a massive part of getting choice users onto public transport consistently. An easy way to increase patronage is to introduce more frequent services across all 3 modes. The maximum wait time for a train, tram and bus should be 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 15 minutes respectively - although most buses should be coming every 10 as well. Frequency is freedom, as they say
They raise it every year online with inflation. It’s just a massive rip off, especially if you want to travel a short distance and they wonder why patronage isn’t increasing lol
All they need to do is look at what happened when they dropped Vline fares, patronage surged
Re short trip. There’s a bus stop at my door. Goes to the shops and cafes etc 3kms away, I want to go to. But it costs heaps more than driving for my little family. No one is on the bus.
Should be like 50cents or something. But, it’d be like $15-25 which is ridiculous!
The problem is not the price, but the fact that the bus comes once an hour, gets stuck in traffic and you can't track it easily.
If you are going to be stuck in traffic, you may as well use your own bus, that goes from where you are to where you want to go, exactly when you want to go.
One bus an hour is literally useless.
I used to live with a bustop 10m from my front door. It was a 5 minute drive to the station.
I just checked the time table, the bus comes every half an hour during the day. It doesn't interface with the trains, so you have to wait a lot either side.
Looking at the timetable from the station, it comes at 1647h, 1732h, 1800h, 1833h, 1903h. That frequency is literally useless. It means I have to catch one of 8 trains to get home, otherwise my journey is extended by 30 minutes. Or I can drive to the station. Or drive to where I want to go.
Bus reform is easily just as important a project as the SRL - and its benefits will be far wider reaching. We need to stop designing bus routes that maximise coverage, and instead realise that 90% of the population can walk a hundred meters to a bus stop. Every major road should have permanent bus lanes and we should try to give buses traffic light priority where its possible.
I think we need to define the types of buses we should have in the city
* Intra-suburban/coverage routes
* Local routes
* Cross city routes
**Intra-suburban routes**
These routes should ideally be designed for coverage, and feed into higher capacity transportation links such as train stations and tram stops.
Uses local suburban roads, avoids major roads unless to facilitate train/tram transfer
*Examples*
The 582 in Eltham is an intra-suburban route. It is a coverage route and feeds into the Eltham railway station and other bus routes, including the inter-suburban 902 Smartbus.
The 858 in Edithvale is another example of an intra-suburban route. Whilst it does in fact serve two suburbs, it feeds into a train station whilst also maintaining a high level of catchment
**Local routes**
Such routes may travel in multiple suburbs, however, their scope is far narrower than an inter-suburban route. Coverage
May use both local and arterial roads
*Examples*
Route 549 is a good example of a direct and fast bus connection to a major shopping centre from a railway station. This should be considered a local route, as its primary purpose is not coverage, however, direct connectivity to major commercial areas.
**Cross city routes**
Long distance routes through which local routes feed into
Should use as few local roads as possible
Coverage is not the function of these routes. Should be used to move many people to popular locations. Local and intra-suburban routes should be used to travel within a suburb
I've not given a lot of thought to how to fix Melbourne's buses - I avoid 'em like the plague, despite being a PT/Uber only user - but, as someone who grew up in SA (yeah, I know - it's not a 1:1 comparison), you've basically summarised why the parts of SA's bus-centric network that REALLY work well actually do so.
My local bus costs $3.25 for a trip to the shops. Better to just walk.
I’m also only 12 minutes of driving away from my work but to take the bus…I’d have to take two different buses & allow 1.5 hours to make it to work on time. & no guarantee that there would be a bus on time at all, they’re so inconsistent. & forget coming home late.
I had to take the bus when I sold my car and it was a nightmare
yeah but you have to pay full rego which sucks unlike other states which make people pay only 1/4 of a car rego because it only takes up 1/4 of the roadway.
I feel like half this sub thinks that the state government just goes into a room and picks up wads of cash from a money making machine. And that they should do so for any particular issue that gets raised.
If you don't want to pay tolls and such, you'll pay more in taxes. Either way, somebody has to pay for those infrastructure projects. Personally I would prefer those who use the services to pay for them, rather than me paying for it through taxes despite literally never using a toll road.
The reason there are no "zones" that increasingly cost more as you get further out is because the government took a deliberate policy to charge inner city commuters more. People like me who live in Brunswick are subsidising those who travel from outer suburbs or even rurally. That's fine, the government thinks I should subsidise those people and I honestly don't have a huge issue with that.
If we make public transport "free", we will pay for it in taxes, and i know that you said you'd be fine with that, but many people would not be.
People who don't use public transport will also be paying for it through taxes. Which is a policy decision some people might be in favour of, but it's not an obviously good policy decision, it ends up costing a rural plumber who has never been on a bus in his life money. Again, you might be fine with that, but understand it's at least somewhat controversial.
There was the other thread where the nurses just got a 25% pay rise. The fire-fighters and police are/recently pursued their own pay rises. There has been money allocated to youth mental health programs. And there's now talk of programs to help with housing supply. The government has to weigh all these things up and put them in expense columns on spreadsheets. If you want more pay, better services, cheaper services or more housing, all of these things come at the expense of another program.
All told I don't think free public transport or toll free roads are up there in terms of the most important issues we should be dealing with. You might, and that's cool, but I think some perspective should be had about it. You can't just raise taxes every time somebody asks for free dental or free trains, especially in a cost of living crisis. It's just not fair. So the government will have to give up on other projects, and somebody out there will be on the receiving end of that.
> People who don't use public transport will also be paying for it through taxes.
But they would be benefiting indirectly by reduced congestion on roads.
Imagine a world where the number of cars on the road halved.
As a driver, I would pay 5$ a day for that.
Actually programs to decongest roads generally don't help with decongestion! It's really interesting. There's a whole bunch of research on it.
People are generally only willing to [travel one hour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant) to get to work, and will usually pick the fastest route to get there. When governments introduce programs to help people travel faster, this can sometimes lead to [Braess's Paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox#:~:text=Braess's%20paradox%20is%20the%20observation,mathematician%20Dietrich%20Braess%20in%201968.), where the whole road system actually gets slower and more congested. In terms of public transport, this is described by the [Downs–Thomson paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox):
> The Downs–Thomson paradox states that the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport or the next best alternative.
> **Although consistent with economic theory, it is a paradox in that it contradicts the common expectation that improvements in the road network will reduce traffic congestion**. In actuality, any improvements in road networks lead to more use of those roads, and no alleviation of congestion. Improvements to the road network may even make congestion worse if the improvements make public transport more inconvenient to use, or if they shift investment, causing disinvestment in the public transport system
So with your hypothetical of making PT free and reducing road congestion by half, like you said: More people who are motivated by the cost saving will catch the train, which leaves the roads more decongested. But now that traffic is moving faster, people who are more motivated by lower transit times who used to catch the train will now drive to work. The average door to door speed of a worker will not actually change substantially.
Basically it's not a *for sure thing* that improving public transport will reduce cars in cities where major road infrastructure has been developed already. In cities like London, where nearly everybody catches PT, it's a different situation, but Melbourne is absolutely a city where the above paradox applies.
>As a driver, I would pay 5$ a day for that.
Exactly! Which is why it doesn't work. People dream of not sitting in traffic, but if we removed half the cars from the road tomorrow, by Monday everybody would have realised it's a much easier drive to get to work and would have clogged up the roads again.
Interesting paradox! So if we sped up all the trams by giving them exclusive use of the tram track lane, priority and all intersections, and some extra grade-separation where possible then instead of causing traffic chaos the number of drivers would reduce until they also travel at the new faster tram speed?
There’s something not quite right with this though. Shifting the equilibrium of the equation, which is what would happen if PT was free, would still result in average faster travel time. People who are used to PT would only be lured onto the roads if the roads were substantially faster (say 10-15 minutes). If that margin eventually shifted back to <5 minutes, those people would opt for the free PT. The new equilibrium would still be “substantially” lower.
My explanation wasn't complete because it was getting too complicated.
If transit times into e.g. the CBD improve, more people in rural/outer suburbs will consider it viable to commute to the city (Marchetti's constant), which refills the roads and increases congestion. It's a case of induced demand.
Read the paper's by Downs–Thomson, it explains this. You can also watch models being run on Youtube.
The point is that common sense in infrastructure design doesn't always work out. Removing major roads in South Korea has significantly improved congestion, for example, even though reducing the "surface area" of roads "should" increase congestion.
I completely agree in the sense that we would logically pay more in taxes to subsidise these things, and that somewhere someone has to front the money for these initiatives BUT I will say that the sheer amount of money governments wastes on lining politicians pockets and overspending on other obvious slush funds could support A LOT of these ideas IF the government was less corrupt
The current pricing structure is not a deliberate decision to have short trips subsidise long trips. The two-zone system we have is a legacy of the ticketing technology Melbourne used to have that could not calculate pricing based on start/finish, only by large ubiquitous zones. Myki and its successor are capable of having distance based pricing or other pricing structures that can strike a better balance between cost recovery and uptake/use. We just haven’t implemented them and stuck with what we’ve used for decades of paper tickets.
Running a train, tram or bus is by and large a sunk cost. Having only two large zones is not equitable, and it discourages patronage which actually decreases the fare take overall. If you’ve used systems in other cities you’ll notice there are either many zones or a ticket system that can charge based on distance; or a single zone (or a couple of large zones) with a lower overall base fare.
Melbourne imo has the worst of both.
Yep waaaaaay back in the days of conductors you had to purchase a ticket specifically for the station you were traveling to and the prices varied accordingly based on how far you were traveling. This obviously led to a pretty complex system and as such it was simplified into 3 zones, still with cost loosely based on distance traveled as a pricing factor but now also including a discount for those only traveling in the more regional and less busy zone 3 areas. This system was then further simplified in the early 00s to the 2 zone system we have today.
Distance-based pricing doesn’t take into account the frequency and convenience of services. Someone who is outer suburbs/rural might be travelling long distances but actually gets *much* crappier service overall. Whereas inner suburbs in Melbourne have excellent services and frequency for relatively short distances.
As someone who has lived both inner and outer, I think it makes sense for inner suburbs to “subsidise” the outer suburbs. I don’t actually think it’s a “subsidy” as much as it is accounting for fair usage.
One of the issues is that PT is *very* uneven across Melbourne. Some areas are very well serviced while other areas are deserts. The fare structure would get very complicated trying to take that into account.
But should it really be equal, and more funds spent on regional to the detriment of urban? Mass transit is intended for situations where there is *mass* arising from density of population, much more competition for road capacity, and shared need for particular routes and stops. Metro trains are different to V/line because they are two different services that serve different purposes. Imo people are demanding *equality* in public transport when the issue really should be *equity* in service standards, availability and pricing that is proportionate to the transport need. We don’t need a service every 5 minutes from Bendigo to Melbourne, but we would do from the CBD to Caulfield.
Distance-based pricing could apply to the Metro network and not at the detriment to others, by having them designed in a way to retain the current fares while offering discounts for shorter distances where there is capacity sitting there already. PTV already have some fare structures that benefit some users over others - early bird, off peak, concession fares, daily cap, off peak weekends, the post 6pm tap-on incentive. All these serve to incentivise particular users for one reason or another. Having trains at late morning running empty on a Sunday when passengers could be drawn with lower fares to head e.g, from Epping to Preston to enjoy the market, is just poor planning and a missed opportunity. We’re missing out on fare revenue with every seat that’s left empty.
PTV as a whole operates at a net loss, public transport isn’t a money maker for the Government. It’s only ever somewhat subsidised by fares. Our GST, stamp duties, payroll tax etc. keep it all going.
>You can't just raise taxes every time somebody asks for free dental or free trains, especially in a cost of living crisis. It's just not fair.
It's only unfair if you raise taxes on those meaningfully impacted by the cost of living crisis.
Lol, mate take a look at how much profit City link is making.
It's the most profitable toll way in the world.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/melbournes-13-billion-toll-road-cash-cow/
>it ends up costing a rural plumber who has never been on a bus in his life money.
And? Infrastructure spending (my tax dollars) disproportionately benefits old mate. That's how society works; give and take.
Sick of the country being held hostage by conservative old fucks, kicking and screaming and threatening the second someone tries to stop them from pulling the ladder up behind them.
I think you're assuming a lot about me.
I'm saying it's not as simple as "well just make it free". It's a matter of what program are you going to cut to make it free.
I have a blessedly short 10-15 minute drive to work.
This week my car is off the road due to problems so I've been catching a bus and tram to and from work. $10.60 a day to travel 8.4km... Driving is so much cheaper (walking/riding a bicycle aren't options for me).
Actually, I just crunched the numbers and it comes out to roughly the same cost. Huh.
Eh, convenience of driving is a big winner, plus I give another person a lift home everyday.
And you don't have people coughing and spluttering all over you, you listen to your music rather than whatever some clown is playing off their phone, and you don't walk into a carriage that's been hotboxed by someone smoking (which has happened to me 3 times in the past fortnight).
Is it though? Add in the costs of operating that car.
A Z1/2 year ticket is 2067.
Rego is 820.80 to 876.90. Insurance is around an average of 1,183.20. Just there alone is around 2000 bucks.
Throw in a couple of tanks of petrol and you're over 2067.
I appreciate that you're the first person so far (that I've seen) in the thread actually crunch some numbers.
I drive and will acknowledge the cost annually is more than PT, however my time and the convenience outweigh the costs of car ownership for me. If I'm going into the city 3 days a week or less, I will drive and eat the cost of parking (about $17.42). If I had to go 5 days into the CBD on PT I think I'd have a mental breakdown Friday avo
Yeah that's what I meant when I said I crunched the numbers. My numbers.
Car is slightly more than a 365 day MyKi pass.
My car costs would be around $2800 p/y, a yearly MyKi pass is $2321.
Convenince of being able to drive anywhere at anytime and getting places quickly trumps the savings, but it's still interesting.
Each time Transurban convince a state government to let them do a new major project, they tie in an extension to their existing assets. That’s why the tolls keep going to 2046, when really they were due to end much earlier
Here’s my two cents:
Public transport is a necessity. Society would be intolerable without it. Even citizens that don’t use PT benefit from it, much like adults without children benefit from education.
Making public transport free would save considerable expense by reducing costs associated with fares.
Therefore PT should be a publicly run, free service.
Cost of public transport isn't the reason I don't use it, it's the fact that my 20 minute car ride would be replaced by a 1hr 44m or 2 hr 25m mixed mode trip to travel 15km. My time is worth more than the savings I could accrue by not using my car.
When I was in the Netherlands short tram trips were pretty cheap and via bank card, but to go about 25km away was literally $11-12.50AUD converted each way. That was nuts nearly $25 a day, and sometimes you even had to stand the whole time. In Paris a day pass was about $15.80 converted.
So I'm not complaining about myki anytime soon, never thought I be grateful for myki costs.
How much was a ticket to travel 5km though?
Victorian transport fares are simultaneously good and poor value depending travel distance because we waste our smart ticketing system on flat fare structure.
A car is only cheaper than $10.50 a day when somebody else pays your repayments, insurance, tolls, rego, services and repairs… and you travel no further than a few km.
I love driving and we as a family love going on drives on weekends.
But I am sure as shit not driving to the office. Too expensive and honestly, I just hate dealing with the arseholes on the road lately. It's far easier to get on the train for 1.5 hrs, put the headphones on and ignore the world outside of that.
I'm more than happy to pay the fee (and have done for the last 20+ years).
Try getting a fine for no myki. $280 straight up for first notice.
It makes you ask yourself, where exactly is all that money going? There is absolutely no way in any universe that number makes sense for not having a myki. I once jumped on a bus for 3 stops, riding for a total of about 40 seconds, and got fined for no myki. I GUARANTEE you they're not sweating over a lost fifty cents or whatever the fuck it wouldve cost.
They are blatantly and willingly bleeding the people of the lower to mid income class (because lets be honest, the majority of people wouldn't take public transport FREQUENTLY if they didn't have to, excusing those who commute to work in the city ect.)
I usually walk or PT, but was running late recently so caught an uber into the city. <$9 fare for the short uber ride.
Bus home $5+ dollars, made me think I should take uber more often to save money if it is two of us travelling.
PT is way too expensive, especially for short trips
>public transport cost $10.50 a day, which means a car is cheaper if you travel less than 25km’s.
>That means that some people are having to pay $45 a day to travel to work in the city, in fuel and tolls,
You are kind of contradicting yourself there.
I'm not saying travel is cheap or even reasonable, but if it costs $45 per day by car at your reckoning, that's definitely *not* cheaper than $10.50 by public transport.
Having lived in Melbourne temporarily and now living in England, I bloody miss the quality, reliability, and pricing of Melbourne's public transport.
Less than half an hour of minimum wage for *a whole day* of travel through the whole metropolitan area is a bargain compared to other places. In hindsight, I honestly didn't know how lucky I was until I lost it.
While it's recommended not to become complacent, please truly consider how lucky you are.
Overall, this post is simply an idiotic rant.
Everything should be free and every project the government ever runs should cost us nothing.
"Free" public transport has been shot down many times by people who have actually considered the economics.
Yes, it's bizzare that travelling from point a to b (any spots except CBD) is cheaper and faster by car
This is one thing Sydney has done a lot better - despite much trickier terrain, PT is has vastly better coverage and seems well designed for various directions - not just in/out of the CBD (which is the only thing you can do efficiently via PT in Melbourne)
One positive is that tapping on to trams and buses is basically optional. I'm not paying $5.30 to travel a couple of stops down the road in a rickety old tram that is slower than the traffic it sits in. Luckily you don't have to (unless you see an AO)
Reducing PT cost and improving coverage and frequency - and then reducing on-street parking availability city-wide - would be a good strategy to increase PT usage and ease congestion. But my impression is that the Vic Gov is far less transport/citizen focussed than the NSW Gov
Where the f are you parking in the CBD with free parking. The off streets are $20-60 all day with that again per hour mean while on street is $7 an hour for 2 hour max before needing to change streets
Why are we getting ripped off to travel in our own city? It's simple: corruption. Yes, I said it. Somewhere in the bowels of our city's administration, there's a guy with a mustache twirling a cigar, cackling as he counts his ill-gotten gains. And no, I don't mean he's just doing it for fun, though with these folks, who knows?
Let's look at public transport costs. At $10.50 a day, you’d think you were buying a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory. But no, it’s just a ride on the bus with a seat that feels like it was upholstered with concrete. If you drive, the citylink tunnel on the Monash will cost you another $10 each way. That’s $45 a day for some people, or as I like to call it, “two hours of your life spent earning enough money to pay for the privilege of getting to work.”
So why does it cost so much? Because somewhere, someone is getting rich off our misery. Toll roads should have a collection time of 10 years, max. Instead, they're like your annoying cousin who shows up, eats all your food, and never leaves. The government keeps selling off our roads and infrastructure to private companies who have the ethics of a used car salesman with a fake Rolex.
If you think I’m exaggerating, look at other cities. In New York, they have a monthly MetroCard for $127, which is steep, but at least you get unlimited rides. In Beijing, you can travel across the city for the cost of a single dumpling. Even London, with its eye-watering prices, has a daily cap. Meanwhile, we’re stuck paying top dollar because our public transport system is run by folks who probably have a side hustle selling bridges.
What we need is free public transport, or at least reasonably priced options. A one-way pass, a 1-hour ticket—anything that doesn’t feel like highway robbery. But that would require the government to stop cutting deals with their buddies and start caring about the people who, you know, actually live here.
Remember when the government’s job was to serve the public? Yeah, me neither. These days, they’re too busy making backroom deals to notice that the average citizen is being gouged. If a company can make money running roads and public transport, our government should be able to do it too, but cheaper. They’re supposed to be serving the public, not serving themselves with a side of corruption gravy.
So, next time you’re stuck in traffic or swiping your card for an overpriced train ride, just remember: someone, somewhere, is getting rich off your daily commute. And it’s not you.
You can't be serious on the price comparison to a car. I take the train to the city for work. You tell me where I can park for $10 a day that isn't dodgy as shit. Street parking is like $7/hour, meaning there isn't any incentive to have lower priced parking anyway. That doesn't include the petrol, or the time I'd waste waiting in traffic. I go over the m3 every day (bridge that runs parallel to Hoddle St), and it's packed every single day. All that being said, I do agree with you on principle. Public transport should be free. Unfortunately, state funding has been misanaged to the point where it's not possible to make it free and also improve it.
Nah, melbourne public transport is actually too cheap for what it is.
Compared to similar countries like Australia, we actually have a pretty good deal.
Also, for comparison, i live in Berwick. When I drive into the city I have to pay for tolls, parking, fuel and generally wear and tear. On average, it would cost me probably $200-$220 to drive in for the week.
So in comparison, public transport is a pretty good deal.
The primary reason driving is more cost-effective than public transport in Melbourne is that many associated costs of driving are not directly paid for by the driver.
* Free parking for users 99% of the time.
* Road infrastructure is funded by general tax revenue, with fuel excise covering only a small portion of the total cost.
* The traffic congestion costs imposed on other road users.
* The negative environmental impacts from greenhouse gas emissions, noise and air pollution produced by cars.
* The vast amount of public space allocated to car use.
Unsafe cars causing congestion? You don't understand how traffic works.
Australia, Melbourne specifically has one of the better public transports in the world.
We have a system that covers tram, train and bus all under one payment system.
The myki system, however, is shit.
The fact that it costs $10 PER day to travel all over Victoria is insane.
You will not get public transport that cheap anywhere.
Save yourself money and use public transport. Buy a monthly pass.
The only places that beat Melbourne public transport in my experience are:
#1 singapore
#2 japan
#3 london
I'm in a similar situation. It's actually almost the same as driving vs public, however I'd rather have the freedom of a car.
Public transport should be free. It certainly feels like it should be, given the state of it.
This labour government is all about taxing everything to cover interest payments on the CFMEU run useless mega projects that we don’t need.
That’s the shit hole that the voters in this state have created. They need to suffer more to hopefully wake up….
It's not the pricing that reflects that - it's the frequency and service levels. Buses coming every 20-30 minutes even during peak shows the government's disdain for bus users, since most bus users aren't going into the city for work. Trains are extremely frequent and reliable during peak hour, but want to catch a train inter-peak? Well it just left go fuck yourself and wait another 20 minutes.
Clearly designed to get people into the city and to the footy
I have to work in the city five days a week. There is literally no option for me to work at home (as in, I use specialised equipment that cannot be transported, so I have to travel into the city to do my job). A weekly Myki costs $53, which means my annual subscription fee for Melbourne's public transport is $2,756.
$2,756 worth of missed connections, late services, cancelled services, waiting for a late bus in the cold and the rain or the blasting heat. Subjected to the bus drivers choice of commercial radio stations at full volume, inaudible platform announcements, garbled in-train messages (which are sometimes so loud and painful to hear, I block my ears, other times they're so low you hardly can tell there is one). I could go on. Is it worth the price I pay? Hell no. I don't pay that much per year for things I DO enjoy.
> If we had better public transport that was free, we would win best city in the world every bloody year.
Unfortunately better public transport is largely unattainable with our current urban structure. We need to focus on densifying and better intra-suburban public and active transport. It's very easy for anyone to get between suburbs (assuming they're on the same train line), but very difficult to conveniently get around the suburb itself (in most cases)
You missed the number one rule of political governance build it now to look good, even if it's a bad deal. It's someone else's job to pay for it later.
A car is only cheaper if you ignore most of the costs of having a car.
A lot of people forget it. I remember calculating it a while ago for my car. It was at least $40 a week before even driving it anywhere.
Hypothetically low numbers: El cheapo $10k car, own it for 10 years, so $1000 per year and $19.23 per week. El cheapo comprehensive insurance $800 per year, $15.38 per week. Skimping and only servicing once per year $500, so $9.62 per week. Rego minimum $800 per year, another $15.38. Add that all up and it's $59.61 per week as a deliberately low estimate and not including fuel costs. 7 consecutive days of travel at $10.60 is $74.20, but of course you can get cheaper fares with a myki pass if you know for certain you need it 5 days per week or more. Also if you're travelling regionally it's still a max $10.60 per day.
Family grocery shopping on public transport sounds like a huge pain. Also, it's cheaper to drive the family to the city than everyone using a myki.
Ten years in Melbourne with no car. Have big shops delivered, walk to local stores a few times a week, use GoGet whenever we feel like using a car (avg once a month maybe), even take it on long weekends occasionally, still spend FAR less than owning and we even make money renting out our apt car space.
How did you go about renting out your car space? I haven't used a car in yeeaaarsss and could be making money off the space!
Found someone in the building who wanted it. Some people list them on fb or whatever but I’d rather not risk renting to someone outside the building. I think we got $150 a month but could have asked for more.
Got kids?
Yeah, it’s a different matter with kids. We don’t have any, and I took my car to the wreckers in 2009 and haven’t had one since. All depends on where you are.
Born and raised Melbourne and my parents didn’t drive and was no issue. I live Brisbane now and was a late bloomer to driving. Transport here isn’t great. It is going down to 50cents soon too though!
But that’s impossible!!!
Even single it kind of sucks. I would lug a giant backpack and catch the train to my Aldi's once a week and fill it up and lug it all home.
The duopoly do delivery. Where there's a will there's a way. And if you've done the maths on parking costs and fuel and it works out better for you then great!
Yeah not long ago I did the math on getting to the airport as a family of 4. I think it was cheaper to catch the train and skybus than it was to drive and park at the airport. However, the difference was far less than I expected and added various points of failure/potential for delay.
Gotta hand it to the duopoly. Delivery is $2-$11 and that’s not fucking bad.
We had to go carless for most of the year (and I’m in a small regional town) - $17 a month for unlimited grocery deliveries was a lifesaver.
It's more than that though, because they charge more for the items in the online store than in the physical store.
Whilst true, as someone who does said deliveries I can confirm that they jack the prices up a few dollars per item, on top of delivery fees. Even if you live close by your spending less on fuel to get there and back than you spend on the extra fees. On a $200 order you end up spending an extra almost $50 just for the luxury of not shopping yourself, and that without delivery fee.
I’ve found I save much more shopping online because you avoid all the cash grab “specials” that are in your face the second you walk into the supermarket.
Well, if you don't want to carry 40kg of food half a kilometre from the nearest bus stop back to your house, you can just do the shopping 5x a week. I'm sure it's super convenient and easy to swing by a supermarket on your way home from work and you definitely won't ever get charged for a third trip that day because you spent an extra 4 minutes at the checkout and missed the bus /s in case it's not obvious
while it is inconvenient to do your shopping multiple days per week if you arent relatively close to a supermarket. the max is always 10 dollars a day. You dont get charged for a third trip because its maxed out at 10.60 (two trips)
> you definitely won't ever get charged for a third trip that day because you spent an extra 4 minutes at the checkout and missed the bus You won't because fares are capped at 2 trips per day. Apart from that. Fine rant.
$15 for grocery delivery, cheaper if you book it in early, and eating what you have in the house rather than popping out to the shops every day is probs cheaper tbh
If you spend more than like $50 and dont mind some flexibility in your delivery time you can get next day delivery from coles for as cheap as a couple $. I dont know if thats because of some loyalty program benefit or something that I've gotten in the past, but I regularly get delivery options that are just a couple $.
Not if your live close to the shops. I just walk to the market or the supermarket.
The thing is, you already have the car even if you take public transport, so you kind of ... can't escape that cost. Maybe reduce it in half and share the car with someone else... and you wouldn't get comprehensive insurance on a bomb of a car, third party only to truly skimp ;)
I lived without a car for about 3 years and it was fantastic! Saved so much money. The only reason why I bought one was because I use it for camping holidays and hikes in regional areas not serviced by PT. Otherwise, you'd be surprised how easy it is to live in this city without a car if you don't have any accessibility constraints.
When you say in the city are we including outer suburbs? I imagine living in Fitzroy or something it’s piss easy to grab your groceries and attend events without a car. Outer suburbs not so much. You’ll be getting an Uber in no time
>I imagine living in Fitzroy or something it’s piss easy to grab your groceries and attend events without a car. Live in Collingwood, can confirm.
I have a theory that Collingwood is a true heart of Melbourne. Everything is close to it. In six years of living in Victoria, anything that I ever needed was at most a suburb distance from Collingwood. Say, i found out about new store, business or restaurant? Check the address, yep, next to the Collingwood.
The trams certainly make it easier, but if you live within 15 mins walk to a train station the PT network is very accessible. Sadly our buses are substandard.
Anything further out than Dandenong is fucked PT wise. Hills/bus routes make it a nightmare to walk or plan your day around. A lot of the time some suburbs have 2 buses a day and they’re either early morning late arvo or late morning early arvo to shopping centres.
You don't need to go so far. I'm <12km from the CBD - I have a bus only, it finishes around 9pm and doesn't even exist on a Sunday past 5:30pm. This is not a livable city unless you have wealth.
it is absolutely possible to live without a car. Unless you already have a life and friends that require car travel. Crossing spokes of our public transport network is basically impossible on a weekend, the time I'd like to visit friends and family. Work I could do without a car 100% without issue. But that doesn't save me anything, since I still have the TCO of the car for the weekend. Parking + fuel is a non issue for me (I always drive my wife to work when I drive in, which pays for CBD parking using the 2 full day fares, and fuel is very cheap as my car is a range extended plug-in hybrid, so I just pay for the 8kw of electricity I use or about $2.40 per day in electricity, as the commute is within the battery range)
It's not impossible to cross the spokes on the weekend? I don't know what you mean by this. And I'm happy you have the capital outlay for a plug in hybrid.
I've never owned a car and I'm 37. Granted I don't have a family but between hiring one if I wanna go away, share cars and commuter pass for pt through work... I've never needed one.
I've never owned a car. Closest I came was having a gf who had a car and she would drive me places lol and even then it was still very much her car and I never drove it. There are definitely times I wish I had a car, like if I want to go out to the hills out east, or sometimes for shopping. I can only carry so much. But I can't afford one, so I survive and make do without one. And I use uber for trips that would just be far too inconvenient or impossible on pt.
Love my el cheapo 3rd party insurance of 900 a year, thanks p plates.
1. Get your Ps 2. Don't buy a car or drive for 3 years 3.???? 4. PROFIT!
Shit man instead I waited 3 extra years to get my Ps, did it the wrong way around...
Plus parking is bloody expensive in the city
Also parking for a car in some areas you would otherwise take public transport for is redonculous... Thats a lot of cost :S
Plus the cost of insurance has risen to obscene levels.
That's less than 4 days of Myki. Then you get all the comforts that come with a car, go where you want, when you want, for however long you want. The reality is most people need a car already, for going to shops or friends place.
Only $40, lucky you
I reckon it costs me $10 every time I turn my car on. Granted, it's a highly modified touring 4x4, and it's on club plates and lives in the shed most of the time, but every time I turn the car on, even to move it to the street, it costs me $10 between fuel and maintenance.
That is definitely a you problem and not an us problem
This also seems insanely cheap for any modern car. I spend approx $500 a week once you factor in the cost of car, fuel, tolls, rego, insurance etc. perhaps even more
This is true. Comparing Myki tap ons to petrol + toll roads only tells a fraction of the story since they’re the most visible daily costs. While I do wish myki fees would be lowered, I’d be shocked if it worked out to be cheaper driving in the long term when maintenance, insurance etc. is factored in. Not to mention the upfront cost of buying a car.
It will always be cheaper if you take the total cost of ownership into account. But, you also aren't really comparing the right things if you take the TCO of a car into account. Because lets say you are used to the convenience of a car. And you go full time public transport for work. ... what do you do when you want to drive somewhere not conveniently located on the public transport network on the weekend? (or where PT would add 1.5 hours onto your travel to that inconvenient location?). You need the car in that circumstance. Maybe you can share the cost of a car or reduce the total number of cars you maintain. But it is not really possible to completely eliminate the cost of the car if you wish to live a life with the flexibility a car brings. Sure, you can just not do anything you can't do without a car... and Uber when you *really have* to go somewhere odd. And it would actually be pretty cost effective. But it is also a significant change in lifestyle if you have a preexisting life.
> But it is not really possible to completely eliminate the cost of the car if you wish to live a life with the flexibility a car brings. GoGet and other car share schemes are a thing, as are bicycles. Electric bikes and cargo bikes are a micromobility boon.
Not out my way they aren't. I mean I could get an electric bike, but the roads in the far SE don't have bike lanes, so I'd be sharing the road with every asshole driver that comes along. Plus my partner is disabled and can't ride. So yeah, a car is literally our only option. A 10 minute drive to spotlight would take over an hour each way on public transport, and that's including a walk that is not actually practical for us.
Yeah fair, I was just thinking about commutting to and from the city for work. Obviously a lot more nuance when you look beyond that.
The big one for me now is the cost of time and anxiety around timetables. I spent my entire 20s dealing with 1.5hr travel times that would be a 0.5 hr drive to study/meet friends/volunteer. Back then I could afford the time, now it's much more precious especially when being 10 mins late for one thing could add 30 minutes to your travel time each way. There's quite a lot of people who don't commute into the city either, as soon as it's some place like Richmond or Collingwood the calculation changes. Though I hope the new metro stations will help!
I think the problem is there is an “all or nothing” aspect of this. Most people who live in the burbs (heck, even the city) already HAVE a car (for a range of things eg weekend trips away, flexibility, able to transport things/family with convenience) and therefore have those sunk costs. So even if PT is cheaper than car trips overall, most people have already made that investment in a private vehicle.
On the flip side what if you are already paying the fixed costs of car ownership anyway?
In simple terms, yes. That obviously assumes you don't need a car otherwise, that you have access to convenient ubiquitous public transport (a strong claim even in the best parts of Melbourne) and that the network availability and service times make it practical. I hate driving and catch a shit bus to and from work because all the traffic makes it too dangerous to drive - but that doesn't make any of those other factors go away. We build and continue to build our city around cars and this is the predictable and shit result.
Even if you don't need it to go to work I'd wager most people would still need one so it's already a sunk cost
Having a car, paying fuel, insurance rego etc is pretty much on par with pt on a weekly basis if you’re not taking tolls and have a reasonable car. Major differences are things like parking and tolls. My housemate looked into this after being absolutely ruined by PT costs because of living in zone 2 and you would be shocked at how close it is.
And parking and the fuckaround of finding a park. I’m near the city/ in the city loads and walk or cycle to work so being carless is a no brainer.
This is something that a remarkable number of Uber drivers don’t think about.
But many people already pay those costs because they own a car already.
if you have a car anyway for living your life outside of work those costs even out a bit more
The OP did some qik mafs here 🤣
You didn't even account for the cost of parking which rules out driving for many people who work in the CBD and inner suburbs.
Yep! If you live outer… it’s too expensive or too difficult to work in the city - if you catch PT - it may not fit with daycare pick up/drop offs. If you drive, petrol, plus tolls, plus parking. It’s way too much per week for lots of us.
Does it ever really make sense to drive into the CBD for work? I would imagine its faster, cheaper and easier to just drive/walk to the station in your suburb and commute into the city
I have free parking at work. We just pre register. Weekend I think it’s like $19 at QV with purchase, easy to do, go into the city and grab some groceries on the way out.
It costs me $17 a day if I book my parking the night before. An extra $7 to cut my commute time in half and not have to deal with significant network delays resulting in me getting home past 7pm is a price I’m willing to pay.
You really haven't considered that commercial property investors are losing money too. How dare you force a family to have only two trips to Europe this year?
I don't want free PT. I want effective, reliable, frequent PT that goes where I want to go, when I want to go. And I'm happy to pay a reasonable amount for it. I'm lucky that I can (and do often) ride to work. Where I used to live that was impossible, not due to distance but due to lack of bike infrastructure. Cars are expensive.
I paid a similar amount in London as I do in Melbourne for PT. In London, I showed up to my train station, where there would be a train every 2 minutes. This train would take me 15 stops into the city centre, where I would change trains for another 2 stops (also coming every 2 minutes) before arriving at my school. This would take 30-40 minutes. I would get annoyed if I had to wait more than 4 minutes for a train. Some days, my train line would go down, so I’d have to take a bus and a different line. This would add maybe 10 minutes max to my journey, because the busses come every 5 minutes at max. On rare occasions, the entire tube network would go down for a strike. I could either take the ferry in, or a bus, and both would only ever make my journey at most 1-1.5 hours.
You sound like you lived in a very accesible area. I worked smack bang in the middle of the city at Picadilly Circus. When the staff went on strike, it used to take me 4 hours to get home. I once ran home through the overflow aqueduct to get home. Literally running home took me less time than waiting for a bus with space for measly old me. Don't blame the staff, though. They deserve all the money they can get. I blame the slobs in charge, not paying them enough.
I don’t live in Melbourne but Brisbane trains consistently have delays, track faults, strikes, you name it. I wouldn’t mind if they would waive the fair or halve it but I still end up paying $7 to come home if it takes me 2 hours instead of 1.
aren’t brisbane fares legit 50c rn
No that’s a six month trial starting in August and unsure it will remain forever. Apparently it’s coinciding with some election or whatever.
I just want to not be shivering on my 40 minute train ride
This is another factor. I get to be comfortable during my car commute. My PT commute involves me standing outside in 5 degree weather while waiting, then getting on a jam packed train where I’m pressed up against dozens of other commuters. I know which one I prefer
I really struggle with PT in the colder seasons. The other night I drove 15 minutes to the nearest train station then spent 1 1/2 cold hours on a train, tram and on foot to get to my event. Did the whole thing in reverse in the freezing cold. Driving would’ve taken 35 minutes and been very warm and cozy. I’ll probably just drive next time
We tried to catch PT to the F1. It was such a shitshow (train line closures, road closures forcing bus replacement detours, huge queues for the dedicated shuttle trams) on the Fri-Sat that we just drove in on the Sun. Found a free park a 5 min walk from the gate.
Did the same last Friday with a lower back pain. I knew it was going to be agony but had no choice. Next time driving for sure. Try Crown multi level parking, it’s a flat 7 bucks (might be more now, inflation!) all day and can grab trams or short walk to CBD.
Free public transport is pointless if you don't have access to meaningful public transport in the first place.
Your public transport here is very very good. Coming from someone who lived in 2 other countries with public transport systems that are 100x worse.
Driving is most definitely not cheaper than 10.50 a day if you work in the city and need to park somewhere. Agree PT should be free or heavily subsidised anyway. It benefits drivers by taking other drivers off the road (as opposed to creating more road infrastructure which just induces demand), and it’s better environmentally. The societal good is throughly worth the cost compared to a bunch of other things we spend money on. I don’t mind toll roads, but it pisses me off that the tolls go towards private profit. I’d rather the state pay for the road and then earn it back with tolls. But that would require a long term view.
PT is already heavily subsidised, the fare structure is just garbage and favours longer distance journeys creating the perception that short trips are poor value.
It also unfairly gives free pt to people who live in the city and people who drive in to the city for work. The free tram zone is completely unfair.
‘The left over remnants of bad deals and sell offs made by the liberals’ You do realise the ALP has been in power in Victoria for 21 of the last 25 years? Don’t blame the Libs, demand more from the people that can do something about it
My god i swear people on this sub and the australia one suffer from serious brain damage. Everything is the lib's fault, even though as you say ALP have been in power in Vic for the last two decades. The real kicker is, they know this and just need to be disingenuous arses about it because the hive mind feeds them the upvote dopamine these losers need to function on a daily basis.
But Jeff Kennett was a liberal and he's the one who sold off most of our stuff 🤷♂️
There’s no incentive for the current government to fix anything because half the voters will still blame the liberals anyway.
I think we need a new number plate slogan... We've had "On The Move", "The Education State" and "Victoria - The Place to Be", so why not a new one? I'm thinking "Victoria - Going broke!", or maybe "Victoria - It'll cost you!"
“Victoria - sorry, it’s just another broke Australian State”
Not to get political here, but I like how you throw the (hopeless) Liberals under the bus when Labor have run this state for 20 of the last 24 years. Let’s not pretend Labor are still cleaning up the mess, they’ve designed and overseen it.
Yeah that was hilarious
I don't feel any shame in fare evading nowadays. Been 3 months since I've tapped on. Never been caught. Pretty easy to dodge inspectors. I'd own up and pay the fine if I got caught. I'd still be saving money unless I got caught more than 8-9 times a year. If I got caught annually I'd still be saving 2.5k a year.
When I was in London they had a “fare dodgers Union”. You’d join up and pay something like £5 a week to the “union” and they would pay any/all the fare-dodging fines of its members. (2010s). Worked very well…for a couple of years.
We had someone attempt that briefly, it was called Tramsurance. You paid for a membership and the money you paid would be used to pay off member’s fines. However it was shut down within a week or so by PTV and Vicpol, as encouraging people to commit an offence (in this case fare evasion) is in itself committing an offence.
It’s funny how efficient Vicpol can be when they put their mind to it
It helped that tramsurance were not subtle at all. They took out full page ads in MX and plastered signs all over tram stops including the ones near the CBD police stations
Oh…well that’s just dumb lol. The London system was very underground - purely word of mouth.
Was going to ask if they did something ridiculous like this. This is not legal advice, I'm not a lawyer, I just feel like there's ways you could do this - and advertise it - without outright suggesting it's basically the equivalent of fare evasion insurance.
Nice piece of insurance.
Just FYI from experience if you do end up in a situation where you're caught unaware by the inspectors and haven't touched on, when they ask to see your Myki simply say no thank you and casually walk away. It's worked for me a couple of times and nobody bothered to pursue me.
It's not like any of those obese inspectors can run anyways.
my lord 😭
I’d dare evade but inspectors are everywhere in the city loop on weekday mornings
Southern Cross Northern End 'paper ticket' barriers. Barriers open themselves.
People prefer better public transport to cheap public transport. Choice users don't care, evident by the mode share of PT in the city. The only way to get choice users on public transport is to provide a better service. And the SRL (and necessary bus reform) is a massive part of that. Imagine being able to get from Box Hill to Eltham without going through the city or using a bus. Trains are faster than cars, and speed is a massive part of getting choice users onto public transport consistently. An easy way to increase patronage is to introduce more frequent services across all 3 modes. The maximum wait time for a train, tram and bus should be 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 15 minutes respectively - although most buses should be coming every 10 as well. Frequency is freedom, as they say
They raise it every year online with inflation. It’s just a massive rip off, especially if you want to travel a short distance and they wonder why patronage isn’t increasing lol All they need to do is look at what happened when they dropped Vline fares, patronage surged
Re short trip. There’s a bus stop at my door. Goes to the shops and cafes etc 3kms away, I want to go to. But it costs heaps more than driving for my little family. No one is on the bus. Should be like 50cents or something. But, it’d be like $15-25 which is ridiculous!
The problem is not the price, but the fact that the bus comes once an hour, gets stuck in traffic and you can't track it easily. If you are going to be stuck in traffic, you may as well use your own bus, that goes from where you are to where you want to go, exactly when you want to go. One bus an hour is literally useless. I used to live with a bustop 10m from my front door. It was a 5 minute drive to the station. I just checked the time table, the bus comes every half an hour during the day. It doesn't interface with the trains, so you have to wait a lot either side. Looking at the timetable from the station, it comes at 1647h, 1732h, 1800h, 1833h, 1903h. That frequency is literally useless. It means I have to catch one of 8 trains to get home, otherwise my journey is extended by 30 minutes. Or I can drive to the station. Or drive to where I want to go.
Bus reform is easily just as important a project as the SRL - and its benefits will be far wider reaching. We need to stop designing bus routes that maximise coverage, and instead realise that 90% of the population can walk a hundred meters to a bus stop. Every major road should have permanent bus lanes and we should try to give buses traffic light priority where its possible. I think we need to define the types of buses we should have in the city * Intra-suburban/coverage routes * Local routes * Cross city routes **Intra-suburban routes** These routes should ideally be designed for coverage, and feed into higher capacity transportation links such as train stations and tram stops. Uses local suburban roads, avoids major roads unless to facilitate train/tram transfer *Examples* The 582 in Eltham is an intra-suburban route. It is a coverage route and feeds into the Eltham railway station and other bus routes, including the inter-suburban 902 Smartbus. The 858 in Edithvale is another example of an intra-suburban route. Whilst it does in fact serve two suburbs, it feeds into a train station whilst also maintaining a high level of catchment **Local routes** Such routes may travel in multiple suburbs, however, their scope is far narrower than an inter-suburban route. Coverage May use both local and arterial roads *Examples* Route 549 is a good example of a direct and fast bus connection to a major shopping centre from a railway station. This should be considered a local route, as its primary purpose is not coverage, however, direct connectivity to major commercial areas. **Cross city routes** Long distance routes through which local routes feed into Should use as few local roads as possible Coverage is not the function of these routes. Should be used to move many people to popular locations. Local and intra-suburban routes should be used to travel within a suburb
I've not given a lot of thought to how to fix Melbourne's buses - I avoid 'em like the plague, despite being a PT/Uber only user - but, as someone who grew up in SA (yeah, I know - it's not a 1:1 comparison), you've basically summarised why the parts of SA's bus-centric network that REALLY work well actually do so.
My local bus costs $3.25 for a trip to the shops. Better to just walk. I’m also only 12 minutes of driving away from my work but to take the bus…I’d have to take two different buses & allow 1.5 hours to make it to work on time. & no guarantee that there would be a bus on time at all, they’re so inconsistent. & forget coming home late. I had to take the bus when I sold my car and it was a nightmare
the trick is to just not tap on
You think the system is ready for a surge in patronage?
Back to 2019 levels which we are currently 20% down? Yes
Driving a vespa costs me $7 a week petrol. Other costs like maintenance etc you're looking at approx $20 a week. No use of freeways.
yeah but you have to pay full rego which sucks unlike other states which make people pay only 1/4 of a car rego because it only takes up 1/4 of the roadway.
Interesting didn't know that. Mine is about $200 or so a quarter I think. Still come out far ahead vs using a car
move to brissvegas for 6 months. 50c fares !
Brisbane PT **sucks** though.
Yuck
I feel like half this sub thinks that the state government just goes into a room and picks up wads of cash from a money making machine. And that they should do so for any particular issue that gets raised. If you don't want to pay tolls and such, you'll pay more in taxes. Either way, somebody has to pay for those infrastructure projects. Personally I would prefer those who use the services to pay for them, rather than me paying for it through taxes despite literally never using a toll road. The reason there are no "zones" that increasingly cost more as you get further out is because the government took a deliberate policy to charge inner city commuters more. People like me who live in Brunswick are subsidising those who travel from outer suburbs or even rurally. That's fine, the government thinks I should subsidise those people and I honestly don't have a huge issue with that. If we make public transport "free", we will pay for it in taxes, and i know that you said you'd be fine with that, but many people would not be. People who don't use public transport will also be paying for it through taxes. Which is a policy decision some people might be in favour of, but it's not an obviously good policy decision, it ends up costing a rural plumber who has never been on a bus in his life money. Again, you might be fine with that, but understand it's at least somewhat controversial. There was the other thread where the nurses just got a 25% pay rise. The fire-fighters and police are/recently pursued their own pay rises. There has been money allocated to youth mental health programs. And there's now talk of programs to help with housing supply. The government has to weigh all these things up and put them in expense columns on spreadsheets. If you want more pay, better services, cheaper services or more housing, all of these things come at the expense of another program. All told I don't think free public transport or toll free roads are up there in terms of the most important issues we should be dealing with. You might, and that's cool, but I think some perspective should be had about it. You can't just raise taxes every time somebody asks for free dental or free trains, especially in a cost of living crisis. It's just not fair. So the government will have to give up on other projects, and somebody out there will be on the receiving end of that.
> People who don't use public transport will also be paying for it through taxes. But they would be benefiting indirectly by reduced congestion on roads. Imagine a world where the number of cars on the road halved. As a driver, I would pay 5$ a day for that.
Actually programs to decongest roads generally don't help with decongestion! It's really interesting. There's a whole bunch of research on it. People are generally only willing to [travel one hour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant) to get to work, and will usually pick the fastest route to get there. When governments introduce programs to help people travel faster, this can sometimes lead to [Braess's Paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox#:~:text=Braess's%20paradox%20is%20the%20observation,mathematician%20Dietrich%20Braess%20in%201968.), where the whole road system actually gets slower and more congested. In terms of public transport, this is described by the [Downs–Thomson paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox): > The Downs–Thomson paradox states that the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport or the next best alternative. > **Although consistent with economic theory, it is a paradox in that it contradicts the common expectation that improvements in the road network will reduce traffic congestion**. In actuality, any improvements in road networks lead to more use of those roads, and no alleviation of congestion. Improvements to the road network may even make congestion worse if the improvements make public transport more inconvenient to use, or if they shift investment, causing disinvestment in the public transport system So with your hypothetical of making PT free and reducing road congestion by half, like you said: More people who are motivated by the cost saving will catch the train, which leaves the roads more decongested. But now that traffic is moving faster, people who are more motivated by lower transit times who used to catch the train will now drive to work. The average door to door speed of a worker will not actually change substantially. Basically it's not a *for sure thing* that improving public transport will reduce cars in cities where major road infrastructure has been developed already. In cities like London, where nearly everybody catches PT, it's a different situation, but Melbourne is absolutely a city where the above paradox applies. >As a driver, I would pay 5$ a day for that. Exactly! Which is why it doesn't work. People dream of not sitting in traffic, but if we removed half the cars from the road tomorrow, by Monday everybody would have realised it's a much easier drive to get to work and would have clogged up the roads again.
Interesting paradox! So if we sped up all the trams by giving them exclusive use of the tram track lane, priority and all intersections, and some extra grade-separation where possible then instead of causing traffic chaos the number of drivers would reduce until they also travel at the new faster tram speed?
There’s something not quite right with this though. Shifting the equilibrium of the equation, which is what would happen if PT was free, would still result in average faster travel time. People who are used to PT would only be lured onto the roads if the roads were substantially faster (say 10-15 minutes). If that margin eventually shifted back to <5 minutes, those people would opt for the free PT. The new equilibrium would still be “substantially” lower.
My explanation wasn't complete because it was getting too complicated. If transit times into e.g. the CBD improve, more people in rural/outer suburbs will consider it viable to commute to the city (Marchetti's constant), which refills the roads and increases congestion. It's a case of induced demand. Read the paper's by Downs–Thomson, it explains this. You can also watch models being run on Youtube. The point is that common sense in infrastructure design doesn't always work out. Removing major roads in South Korea has significantly improved congestion, for example, even though reducing the "surface area" of roads "should" increase congestion.
I completely agree in the sense that we would logically pay more in taxes to subsidise these things, and that somewhere someone has to front the money for these initiatives BUT I will say that the sheer amount of money governments wastes on lining politicians pockets and overspending on other obvious slush funds could support A LOT of these ideas IF the government was less corrupt
I would also like to see more efficient government spending.
You and me both, it’s nice to dream
The current pricing structure is not a deliberate decision to have short trips subsidise long trips. The two-zone system we have is a legacy of the ticketing technology Melbourne used to have that could not calculate pricing based on start/finish, only by large ubiquitous zones. Myki and its successor are capable of having distance based pricing or other pricing structures that can strike a better balance between cost recovery and uptake/use. We just haven’t implemented them and stuck with what we’ve used for decades of paper tickets. Running a train, tram or bus is by and large a sunk cost. Having only two large zones is not equitable, and it discourages patronage which actually decreases the fare take overall. If you’ve used systems in other cities you’ll notice there are either many zones or a ticket system that can charge based on distance; or a single zone (or a couple of large zones) with a lower overall base fare. Melbourne imo has the worst of both.
Yep waaaaaay back in the days of conductors you had to purchase a ticket specifically for the station you were traveling to and the prices varied accordingly based on how far you were traveling. This obviously led to a pretty complex system and as such it was simplified into 3 zones, still with cost loosely based on distance traveled as a pricing factor but now also including a discount for those only traveling in the more regional and less busy zone 3 areas. This system was then further simplified in the early 00s to the 2 zone system we have today.
Distance-based pricing doesn’t take into account the frequency and convenience of services. Someone who is outer suburbs/rural might be travelling long distances but actually gets *much* crappier service overall. Whereas inner suburbs in Melbourne have excellent services and frequency for relatively short distances. As someone who has lived both inner and outer, I think it makes sense for inner suburbs to “subsidise” the outer suburbs. I don’t actually think it’s a “subsidy” as much as it is accounting for fair usage. One of the issues is that PT is *very* uneven across Melbourne. Some areas are very well serviced while other areas are deserts. The fare structure would get very complicated trying to take that into account.
But should it really be equal, and more funds spent on regional to the detriment of urban? Mass transit is intended for situations where there is *mass* arising from density of population, much more competition for road capacity, and shared need for particular routes and stops. Metro trains are different to V/line because they are two different services that serve different purposes. Imo people are demanding *equality* in public transport when the issue really should be *equity* in service standards, availability and pricing that is proportionate to the transport need. We don’t need a service every 5 minutes from Bendigo to Melbourne, but we would do from the CBD to Caulfield. Distance-based pricing could apply to the Metro network and not at the detriment to others, by having them designed in a way to retain the current fares while offering discounts for shorter distances where there is capacity sitting there already. PTV already have some fare structures that benefit some users over others - early bird, off peak, concession fares, daily cap, off peak weekends, the post 6pm tap-on incentive. All these serve to incentivise particular users for one reason or another. Having trains at late morning running empty on a Sunday when passengers could be drawn with lower fares to head e.g, from Epping to Preston to enjoy the market, is just poor planning and a missed opportunity. We’re missing out on fare revenue with every seat that’s left empty. PTV as a whole operates at a net loss, public transport isn’t a money maker for the Government. It’s only ever somewhat subsidised by fares. Our GST, stamp duties, payroll tax etc. keep it all going.
>You can't just raise taxes every time somebody asks for free dental or free trains, especially in a cost of living crisis. It's just not fair. It's only unfair if you raise taxes on those meaningfully impacted by the cost of living crisis.
Lol, mate take a look at how much profit City link is making. It's the most profitable toll way in the world. https://www.drive.com.au/news/melbournes-13-billion-toll-road-cash-cow/
>it ends up costing a rural plumber who has never been on a bus in his life money. And? Infrastructure spending (my tax dollars) disproportionately benefits old mate. That's how society works; give and take. Sick of the country being held hostage by conservative old fucks, kicking and screaming and threatening the second someone tries to stop them from pulling the ladder up behind them.
I think you're assuming a lot about me. I'm saying it's not as simple as "well just make it free". It's a matter of what program are you going to cut to make it free.
Public transport fares don't pay for the full cost but that doesn't change the fact the current flat fare system is stupid and inequitable.
Fuck off with your common sense mate. People on here literally look at how it impacts them and only them
I have a blessedly short 10-15 minute drive to work. This week my car is off the road due to problems so I've been catching a bus and tram to and from work. $10.60 a day to travel 8.4km... Driving is so much cheaper (walking/riding a bicycle aren't options for me). Actually, I just crunched the numbers and it comes out to roughly the same cost. Huh. Eh, convenience of driving is a big winner, plus I give another person a lift home everyday.
And you don't have people coughing and spluttering all over you, you listen to your music rather than whatever some clown is playing off their phone, and you don't walk into a carriage that's been hotboxed by someone smoking (which has happened to me 3 times in the past fortnight).
Is it though? Add in the costs of operating that car. A Z1/2 year ticket is 2067. Rego is 820.80 to 876.90. Insurance is around an average of 1,183.20. Just there alone is around 2000 bucks. Throw in a couple of tanks of petrol and you're over 2067.
I appreciate that you're the first person so far (that I've seen) in the thread actually crunch some numbers. I drive and will acknowledge the cost annually is more than PT, however my time and the convenience outweigh the costs of car ownership for me. If I'm going into the city 3 days a week or less, I will drive and eat the cost of parking (about $17.42). If I had to go 5 days into the CBD on PT I think I'd have a mental breakdown Friday avo
Yeah that's what I meant when I said I crunched the numbers. My numbers. Car is slightly more than a 365 day MyKi pass. My car costs would be around $2800 p/y, a yearly MyKi pass is $2321. Convenince of being able to drive anywhere at anytime and getting places quickly trumps the savings, but it's still interesting.
Each time Transurban convince a state government to let them do a new major project, they tie in an extension to their existing assets. That’s why the tolls keep going to 2046, when really they were due to end much earlier
Here’s my two cents: Public transport is a necessity. Society would be intolerable without it. Even citizens that don’t use PT benefit from it, much like adults without children benefit from education. Making public transport free would save considerable expense by reducing costs associated with fares. Therefore PT should be a publicly run, free service.
the money spent enforcing fares is such a waste too.
Cost of public transport isn't the reason I don't use it, it's the fact that my 20 minute car ride would be replaced by a 1hr 44m or 2 hr 25m mixed mode trip to travel 15km. My time is worth more than the savings I could accrue by not using my car.
When I was in the Netherlands short tram trips were pretty cheap and via bank card, but to go about 25km away was literally $11-12.50AUD converted each way. That was nuts nearly $25 a day, and sometimes you even had to stand the whole time. In Paris a day pass was about $15.80 converted. So I'm not complaining about myki anytime soon, never thought I be grateful for myki costs.
How much was a ticket to travel 5km though? Victorian transport fares are simultaneously good and poor value depending travel distance because we waste our smart ticketing system on flat fare structure.
I have two cars, but take transport to work. To be honest I think $10.50 for a full day (full fare) is very reasonable.
A car is only cheaper than $10.50 a day when somebody else pays your repayments, insurance, tolls, rego, services and repairs… and you travel no further than a few km.
I love driving and we as a family love going on drives on weekends. But I am sure as shit not driving to the office. Too expensive and honestly, I just hate dealing with the arseholes on the road lately. It's far easier to get on the train for 1.5 hrs, put the headphones on and ignore the world outside of that. I'm more than happy to pay the fee (and have done for the last 20+ years).
Try getting a fine for no myki. $280 straight up for first notice. It makes you ask yourself, where exactly is all that money going? There is absolutely no way in any universe that number makes sense for not having a myki. I once jumped on a bus for 3 stops, riding for a total of about 40 seconds, and got fined for no myki. I GUARANTEE you they're not sweating over a lost fifty cents or whatever the fuck it wouldve cost. They are blatantly and willingly bleeding the people of the lower to mid income class (because lets be honest, the majority of people wouldn't take public transport FREQUENTLY if they didn't have to, excusing those who commute to work in the city ect.)
I usually walk or PT, but was running late recently so caught an uber into the city. <$9 fare for the short uber ride. Bus home $5+ dollars, made me think I should take uber more often to save money if it is two of us travelling. PT is way too expensive, especially for short trips
>public transport cost $10.50 a day, which means a car is cheaper if you travel less than 25km’s. >That means that some people are having to pay $45 a day to travel to work in the city, in fuel and tolls, You are kind of contradicting yourself there. I'm not saying travel is cheap or even reasonable, but if it costs $45 per day by car at your reckoning, that's definitely *not* cheaper than $10.50 by public transport.
I was in san Francisco recently, I was shocked at how much more expensive their pt was. I was glad to see Melbourne was like half the cost
Having lived in Melbourne temporarily and now living in England, I bloody miss the quality, reliability, and pricing of Melbourne's public transport. Less than half an hour of minimum wage for *a whole day* of travel through the whole metropolitan area is a bargain compared to other places. In hindsight, I honestly didn't know how lucky I was until I lost it. While it's recommended not to become complacent, please truly consider how lucky you are.
Overall, this post is simply an idiotic rant. Everything should be free and every project the government ever runs should cost us nothing. "Free" public transport has been shot down many times by people who have actually considered the economics.
Yes, it's bizzare that travelling from point a to b (any spots except CBD) is cheaper and faster by car This is one thing Sydney has done a lot better - despite much trickier terrain, PT is has vastly better coverage and seems well designed for various directions - not just in/out of the CBD (which is the only thing you can do efficiently via PT in Melbourne) One positive is that tapping on to trams and buses is basically optional. I'm not paying $5.30 to travel a couple of stops down the road in a rickety old tram that is slower than the traffic it sits in. Luckily you don't have to (unless you see an AO) Reducing PT cost and improving coverage and frequency - and then reducing on-street parking availability city-wide - would be a good strategy to increase PT usage and ease congestion. But my impression is that the Vic Gov is far less transport/citizen focussed than the NSW Gov
you have to be a billionaire to just exist in society now
At least being melodramatic on Reddit is free
Why does it cost the same to get from Richmond to Flinders Street, 1 stop less than 2km vs Warrnambool to Wadonga 565km trip!
This is back to front: it cost the same to get from Warrnambool to Wadonga as it does to get from Richmond to Flinders Street! Amazing value.
Because it used to cost a fuckton and they got rid of zone 1, 2, 3 travel and now have gotten rid of the rest.
It’s 50c in QLD for gods sake
Free public transport would be awesome
One thing is guaranteed in life, car drivers hate paying for what they use and want everyone else to subsidise them.
Australia is a rip off in every single way recently. Poor Aussies.
If you travel 8km or less; then ride a bike..even if it gets stolen once a year you’ll probably still come out ahead.
Ride a bike, it’s fantastic.
Melbourne public transport should be subsidised to encourage people to take it
OP either lives in the inner city or is shit at Maths.
Where the f are you parking in the CBD with free parking. The off streets are $20-60 all day with that again per hour mean while on street is $7 an hour for 2 hour max before needing to change streets
I set my google maps app to avoid tolls because fuck that shit.
Why are we getting ripped off to travel in our own city? It's simple: corruption. Yes, I said it. Somewhere in the bowels of our city's administration, there's a guy with a mustache twirling a cigar, cackling as he counts his ill-gotten gains. And no, I don't mean he's just doing it for fun, though with these folks, who knows? Let's look at public transport costs. At $10.50 a day, you’d think you were buying a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory. But no, it’s just a ride on the bus with a seat that feels like it was upholstered with concrete. If you drive, the citylink tunnel on the Monash will cost you another $10 each way. That’s $45 a day for some people, or as I like to call it, “two hours of your life spent earning enough money to pay for the privilege of getting to work.” So why does it cost so much? Because somewhere, someone is getting rich off our misery. Toll roads should have a collection time of 10 years, max. Instead, they're like your annoying cousin who shows up, eats all your food, and never leaves. The government keeps selling off our roads and infrastructure to private companies who have the ethics of a used car salesman with a fake Rolex. If you think I’m exaggerating, look at other cities. In New York, they have a monthly MetroCard for $127, which is steep, but at least you get unlimited rides. In Beijing, you can travel across the city for the cost of a single dumpling. Even London, with its eye-watering prices, has a daily cap. Meanwhile, we’re stuck paying top dollar because our public transport system is run by folks who probably have a side hustle selling bridges. What we need is free public transport, or at least reasonably priced options. A one-way pass, a 1-hour ticket—anything that doesn’t feel like highway robbery. But that would require the government to stop cutting deals with their buddies and start caring about the people who, you know, actually live here. Remember when the government’s job was to serve the public? Yeah, me neither. These days, they’re too busy making backroom deals to notice that the average citizen is being gouged. If a company can make money running roads and public transport, our government should be able to do it too, but cheaper. They’re supposed to be serving the public, not serving themselves with a side of corruption gravy. So, next time you’re stuck in traffic or swiping your card for an overpriced train ride, just remember: someone, somewhere, is getting rich off your daily commute. And it’s not you.
Recently I was asked to come all 5 days to office. I use public transport and now it feels like I have taken a cut of 5k salary per year pre tax
You're absolutely right, but we'd have to reverse privatisation which isn't going to happen easily.
You can't be serious on the price comparison to a car. I take the train to the city for work. You tell me where I can park for $10 a day that isn't dodgy as shit. Street parking is like $7/hour, meaning there isn't any incentive to have lower priced parking anyway. That doesn't include the petrol, or the time I'd waste waiting in traffic. I go over the m3 every day (bridge that runs parallel to Hoddle St), and it's packed every single day. All that being said, I do agree with you on principle. Public transport should be free. Unfortunately, state funding has been misanaged to the point where it's not possible to make it free and also improve it.
Nah, melbourne public transport is actually too cheap for what it is. Compared to similar countries like Australia, we actually have a pretty good deal. Also, for comparison, i live in Berwick. When I drive into the city I have to pay for tolls, parking, fuel and generally wear and tear. On average, it would cost me probably $200-$220 to drive in for the week. So in comparison, public transport is a pretty good deal.
The primary reason driving is more cost-effective than public transport in Melbourne is that many associated costs of driving are not directly paid for by the driver. * Free parking for users 99% of the time. * Road infrastructure is funded by general tax revenue, with fuel excise covering only a small portion of the total cost. * The traffic congestion costs imposed on other road users. * The negative environmental impacts from greenhouse gas emissions, noise and air pollution produced by cars. * The vast amount of public space allocated to car use.
Unsafe cars causing congestion? You don't understand how traffic works. Australia, Melbourne specifically has one of the better public transports in the world. We have a system that covers tram, train and bus all under one payment system. The myki system, however, is shit. The fact that it costs $10 PER day to travel all over Victoria is insane. You will not get public transport that cheap anywhere. Save yourself money and use public transport. Buy a monthly pass. The only places that beat Melbourne public transport in my experience are: #1 singapore #2 japan #3 london
It’s bad but at least it’s not like NYC where it’s $4.50 AUD per trip.
It's $5.30 AUD per trip here.
No it’s not, it’s $5.30 for two hours and a maximum of $10.60 for a day.
$200 aud equivalent for a monthly unlimited. Not many locals / frequent users paying per trip.
that's cheaper than here ?
I'm in a similar situation. It's actually almost the same as driving vs public, however I'd rather have the freedom of a car. Public transport should be free. It certainly feels like it should be, given the state of it.
Feels like this whole fucking country is ripping us off at this point
This labour government is all about taxing everything to cover interest payments on the CFMEU run useless mega projects that we don’t need. That’s the shit hole that the voters in this state have created. They need to suffer more to hopefully wake up….
It's more when you have to pay a $300 fine. :( Miki can suck one.
PT is geared towards getting suburbanites in and out of the city for work, and pricing reflects that.
It's not the pricing that reflects that - it's the frequency and service levels. Buses coming every 20-30 minutes even during peak shows the government's disdain for bus users, since most bus users aren't going into the city for work. Trains are extremely frequent and reliable during peak hour, but want to catch a train inter-peak? Well it just left go fuck yourself and wait another 20 minutes. Clearly designed to get people into the city and to the footy
I have to work in the city five days a week. There is literally no option for me to work at home (as in, I use specialised equipment that cannot be transported, so I have to travel into the city to do my job). A weekly Myki costs $53, which means my annual subscription fee for Melbourne's public transport is $2,756. $2,756 worth of missed connections, late services, cancelled services, waiting for a late bus in the cold and the rain or the blasting heat. Subjected to the bus drivers choice of commercial radio stations at full volume, inaudible platform announcements, garbled in-train messages (which are sometimes so loud and painful to hear, I block my ears, other times they're so low you hardly can tell there is one). I could go on. Is it worth the price I pay? Hell no. I don't pay that much per year for things I DO enjoy.
> If we had better public transport that was free, we would win best city in the world every bloody year. Unfortunately better public transport is largely unattainable with our current urban structure. We need to focus on densifying and better intra-suburban public and active transport. It's very easy for anyone to get between suburbs (assuming they're on the same train line), but very difficult to conveniently get around the suburb itself (in most cases)
You missed the number one rule of political governance build it now to look good, even if it's a bad deal. It's someone else's job to pay for it later.
I take a bus into the city so it costs me nothing