Paying extra to catch the train

Casual users of public transport in the Bondi area feel they have missed out on the benefits their commuting cousins, who are daily users of the My Zone periodical tickets, may be enjoying.

The problem is that they must pay separately for the bus and train portions of their journey. Queuing mid journey to buy a train ticket is something which few other cities demand. Some travellers, those with longer memories, have remembered that when the Eastern Suburbs Railway opened about 30 years ago, passengers were being lured to use the train with combined bus rail tickets that could be bought on the buses.  These disappeared after a couple of years.

Much was made at the time of the reduction in the number of buses to the city, and the reduced pollution and traffic the trains had brought.

These days, there is little thought of this, a bus-only ride is cheaper at $4.30 and weekend trains were reduced to a 15-minute service by an earlier Minister for Transport, Michael Costa. This fare is discounted if one takes the 10 ticket multi-ride option – but they don’t work on the trains!

So if you do the right thing and change to the train, as a casual user it can cost $6.50, a little less if you have a multi-ride bus ticket.

The joke is that well-informed users from other districts can buy a combined train-bus return ticket to Bondi Beach from the machine or ticket window at their local station: if bought at the city, a single ride costs $5.20 and off peak, two rides on a return ticket can be bought for the same amount.

This isn’t available for Bondi and other local users of the Eastern Suburbs Railway.

Let’s hope that when the new smart card tickets are finally engineered (and the My Zone exercise is designed to pave the way for this) passengers will be able to transfer between modes of transport with a single fare being charged. This already happens in Melbourne and other advanced cities around the world.

It is well overdue in Sydney, especially when we who live in Bondi change from buses to trains when going to town.

– BY PETER McCALLUM