Looks like some tickets will be retired soon to encourage the use of Opal cards.
http://www.transportnsw.info/en/transport-status/news/2014/p…
Sydney Trains - Some paper tickets to be retired from 1st September 2014
JSQUARED on 02/06/2014 - 03:15
Last edited 02/06/2014 - 03:16
Last edited 02/06/2014 - 03:16
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- 63Paper tickets
- 19Opal card
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Same with me. Quarterly is a lot cheaper than Opal, and they have all these signs at the station saying save with opal!!! I won't be saving anything. Tempted to buy a yearly ticket when my quarterly runs out in August. It's so much money for a yearly though…but it's worth the savings
have you considering the ability to go anywhere for free after 8 full paid trips using opal?
also when you have holiday one or two week or more, the paper ticket quarterly or yearly will cost more
Everywhere else I have car. I understand that a lot of people will benefit from opal but not the buyers of 90 days and above for pure commute.
Say you pay $410 for MyTrain90 and use it for 77 days = $5.33 a day.
It is still cheaper than 37.60/7 = $5.37So even if you take a 2 week vacation every 90 days (one lucky b@$t@#!) you still lose. And you can opt to buy shorter duration tickets when you go for long holidays. 90 day tickets are where the discounts pretty much max out
there are other "tricks" (i use "" because it is purely legal) to reduce.
now i paid less with opal than my quarterly before with paper. dont know about yearly.the tricks are:
taking short distance trips on lunch time so you hit that 8 free paid trips fasteri did consider that…bit of a pain to spend lunchtime catching the train one stop, although i do occasionally catch the train from circular quay to town hall at lunch to go to the QVB. Not every week though.
Yes he has
You really haven't crunched the numbers have you
For the quarterly you can miss out on 1 and a half weeks and you are still head.
For the annual that's 6 weeks.
That will be closed off eventually, that's an obvious exploit.
Even if it doesn't
For someone on the 20-35km fare, that's a saving of 11.20 a week over the normal fare.
A lot of work for that.
You're saving 3-4$ a week over a quarterly/annual
delete
I do the same, Three lunch trips on first three days of the week
i was doing this in Brisbane. Run up short trip then get all free ones. i do local pub two station up from city. mid week i am into free stuff. my trip cost around 20.00 one way. Brisbane to gold coast is not cheep.
how much that saves?
No such thing as an Opal concession card for uni students, etc.
TT_TT
Paying more $$$
Opal is still a trial. The Concession card for students simply hasn't been released yet. Hence why Paper Tickets for Concession/Students are not being discontinued in September.
Concessions Monthly (28 day)
Concessions Quarterly (90 day)
Concessions Yearly (365 day)the above will disappear though
yeah apparently they are introducing it for students at the end of the year
If you have flexible work hours, consider asking your boss if you can work hours such that you only travel off peak.
Off peak Opal is considerably cheaper than any paper ticket.
I don't understand why they don't make a quarterly/yearly equivalent version of the opal. Basically selling stored value of $x for 20% off, or whatever the discount is.
It's simple. The bean counters in Treasury think the discounts on long term tickets are too big, and hence they are being abolished. At the same time, they are running a highly misleading (mis)information campaign stating how much better value Opal allegedly is.
But it is better value for the majority that do not purchase or use long term tickets….
How would you know? Do you have statistical data on the majority?
Me too. I get a quarterly MyMulti2 but even the weekly is only $54, compared to $60 on Opal. Anyone who gets more than two modes of transport will be impacted.
Good idea to buy a last minute annual ticket!
Yeah, except i just realised that i'm planning to go on holidays for 4 or 5 weeks, so the benefit of the annual ticket is reduced. If people aren't planning on holidays it's a good idea though…i'll get a quarterly in August and then i guess i'm stuck with Opal :(
- Get a yearly in August
- Rent out your ticket to a mate for the 4 weeks you're on leave.
- Use savings to buy cheap air tickets somewhere nice :)
I think you can get any duration "quarterly" tickets, so you can get one that runs right up to your vacation.
why cant you pre-buy the paper multi?
Also, has anyone noticed that the people with Opal are slower to go through the ticket gates? I noticed there seems to be a lag on the card, so it takes a few seconds for the swipe to register and let them through. I keep getting stuck behind opal people at the gates :/
Yes, it takes just a fraction of a second longer than you expect to register properly. Probably balances out against the regularity with which the gates fail to read valid paper tickets.
I wonder how many people are getting overcharged because it doesn't register properly at places where there are no barriers
I wonder that too. My local station just has the opal "poles". There's maybe 4 poles with a total of about 7 card readers all up? Doesn't seem like enough for peak hour considering there's only the one exit. I can imagine it's going to be more of a bottleneck after everyone has opal. At the moment your ticket doesn't get checked, you just walk out. If everyone has to stop and swipe at a "pole" and then check and make sure their card has registered, it's going to be a nightmare…
Depends where you are I guess. In the morning town hall/wynyard rush people with opal are so much faster. But then you'll get the occasional person who didn't swipe it right.
This is stupid unless Opal will be taking period tickets by then.
28 day is a saving on weekly. Quarterly is a saving on 28 day (and saving an entire month compared with weekly), and yearly is an even larger saving.
When opal fares are compared with weeklies, many people are going to be much worse off.
Going to buy a yearly in July when my quarterly is up.
4% of tickets sold are MyTrain periodicals, 5.6% of journeys are made with MyTrain periodicals.
Why don't more people buy quarterlies or yearlies?
not everyone are ozb member and splashing credit card everyday, some are live day by day basis due to low wages so they cant spare $400 to buy quarterly tickets
Do they have concession cards yet?
Edit: "The Senior/Pensioner Opal card is available later."I suspect they are getting ready for privatisation with the rebranding from city rail to Sydney trains.
I've noticed a bit of advertising popping up in trains too…above the seats on the inside and advertising down the outside of trains…i've only seen advertising for tic tacs on the outside - the new tropical flavour, but seen 3 or 4 different ads on the inside of the train. Interesting.
Also with the change to Sydney Trains they've started referring to passengers as "customers" pretty much everywhere. Honestly, that annoys me. Indicates their goal is to make a profit, not provide a public service with fares to recoup costs.
I honestly think they would treat me better if they thought of me as a customer rather than doing a public service for me.
Available later in the year.
there is a "trick" (i use " " sign because it is purely legal but its kind of tricks) to reduce opal fees
now i paid less with opal than my quarterly before with paper. dont know about yearly.the trick is:
taking short distance trips on lunch time so you hit that 8 free paid trips faster, means you pay for cheap trips and pay free for the expensive partsIs it true? Are you saying that you can make round trips in city 8x then free ride to blue mountains?
You need to wait an hour between trips, otherwise they're counted as a single journey. Or something. The terminology is confusing, and I'm not certain that's unintentional.
Other day I saw a lady tapping off at Town hall station at 7:45 am and the amount deducted was $2.87. I was right behind her and she was using an adult card. Anyone know how that is possible because 7:45 am is considered as peak hours
She must have tapped on Before 7, as it is considered off peak before 7 AM
Huh? They're phasing out Adult Off-Peak Return, but for the moment keeping Adult Single, Adult Return, and Concession Off-Peak Return?
That seems somewhat inconsistent. Why am I not surprised.No Opal concession cards at the moment. Discontinuing Concession MyTrain tickets will disadvantage students.
I would say its because with Adult Off Peak Return (40% discount) there are a few tricks which can't be used with Opal.
If you buy an off peak return ticket after the morning peak period you still have a valid ticket at the 40% discount rate on return if you travel in the evening peak period. This is not possible and will be more expensive with Opal.
You can "break" your journey (hop on and off without needing to buy more tickets) at any non gated stations with your paper ticket. This actually invalidates the ticket however there are no gates to check and ticket inspectors have no way of knowing you broke your journey if you are traveling between any stations which are between what your ticket says.
1) it works both ways — someone getting on a train before 7am and returning home before 430pm will now benefit whereas before they had to buy a 'peak' return ticket.
2) that is fare evasion.
weekly train ticket concession 100times better than opal
This is terrible news for concession holders.
With concession when buying quarterly ticket one gets 32 dollars off.
A little bit more when buying yearly.
A real shame Transport NSW taking money out of the pockets of the financially fragile concession holders!The beauty of Opal is its flexibility.
I commute from Sutherland to Newtown. Once on a paper ticket I wanted to get off at Central instead but the ticket gates refused me, the staff wouldn't let me out and accused me of trying to cheat the system (despite the fact the cost was the same even if i bought to get out at Central). With the Opal card, I can now even get off at Town Hall, buy some groceries at Woolies, then get back on before getting home all at the same cost.
And as "Erwinsie" says there are plenty of ways to save money, especially for those coming from far off lands like Penrith, Campbelltown, and the regional areas. The added benefit is the free trips after 8, which can be used anywhere unlike the weekly where you are restricted to between the stations you purchased. ie On the weekends, your Chatswood to City weekly cannot go Chatswood to Hornsby whereas you can with Opal.
agree ^.
for people with car, yes less benefit but maybe everyone should consider using public transport more, save petrol, car loan, maintenance, pink slips, less pollution, better air quality,better world for our children in the future:)That's an oddity.
I've done that as far back as 15 years ago
The system makes that stop part of your journey.
That means when you jump back on and go to the end. Thats your return ticket done.
If i got off at Redfern it would have been fine. The problem is that Central is not 'between' Sutherland and Newtown…
Argh.. I hate this. Once I forgot to tap in the opal card because that was my 3rd time using it and there was no gate at my station. When I tapped out at Central, I got charged ~$8 instead of ~$4. I let that one go because I thought I was going back to paper ticket, now they are trying to get rid of this.
In my situation above, could I actually asked for return or was it my fault?
It's considered your fault. I don't know if you could persuade them to refund, but definitely not worth the trouble for $4.
Never got the point of quarterly tickets. With the 7 and a half day validity of weeklies (after 3pm), breaks for vacations and long weekends, I would never buy a weekly every seven days so the savings of quarterly tickets vs weekly weren't really there. Plus a quarterly limited zone ticket means if you ever have to go outside the zone, you pay. With weeklies you can buy a mroe expensive one for a week. And the risk of losing your $500+ ticket.
Its worth it.
You're essentially paying for the price of 10 weeklies for 12 weeks and 6 days
So even if you go on vacation for 2 weeks your still ahead.
When you need to go outside the zone, same as weekly, you just goto the ticket guy and ask for a between your ticket and the destination.
With your ticket you get a receipt which you register online, so if you lose your ticket you can get another one
Monthly ticket for the 30-35km region is $149, $41 for weekly, thats a saving of $15
For me, quarterly is almost a saving of 2 weeks worth, which is ~$75 which is probably not much <$1 a day but hey with that I could buy things on ozbargains!
You can actually just give them a call. The support staff are very lenient at the moment because of the rollout.
However, there are Opal tags at every CityRail station now so I'm not sure how that excuse will fly.
Yea the Opal tags were at my station but there was no barricade so I walked past it without realising. It was the first week I'm using it too.. so just havent got the habit to take out the wallet etc..
thats why buy mobile phone case with pocket/sleeve and put your opal there
Couldn't find any that fits Samsung GT-S5300
It was your fault, but the Opal owners will refund the first mistake
You should call the Opal hotline and explain your situation. They tend to be quite forgiving as Opal is still in a trial phase.
I forgot to tap off once too and got charged the default fee ($8.10) . I called them up for a Fare Adjustment and they reduced it on the spot.
The lady then told me you actually have 3 strikes… so yeah just ring up and they will do it quite nicely and no hassle.
Good to know that. I will feel more confident using it if they are lenient. It's not that I would forget all the time, but sometimes those things just happen and it's good to hear that they are being fair. My colleague also forgot once to tap out and he had to drive back to the station to tap out.
going by this:
http://www.sydneytrains.info/tickets/fare_calculator
I pay $41 for a weekly now
$4.7 x 8 = $37.60
after that its free!
Monthly is 149 = $36.25
Quarterly $410/13 = $31.5, assuming you get it on a Monday, 90 days 12 weeks 6 daysyes you can beat weekly with opal,you can NOT beat quarterly. But if you take short trips during lunch time then you will only pay $32 per week! better than quarterly plus free to anywhere after wednesday afternoon!
Weeklies are a rip off in general.
Travel off peak, you save 30%.
That's what I'm going to do. :)
Most useful site www.opalornot.com
Opal in general is more expensive unless you live and work in the city and willing to do meaningless short trips just to take advantage of hitting the 8 free paid trips
I take bus and train and MyMulti is still cheaper. People who travel from further away to city not worth it.
Opal is crap compare to Octopus/Oyster Card in HK/UK, I've said it and will say it again 20 years a Perth company sold the technology to HK, and that is still better than what we have after 2 decades what a shame! MTR over there is earning massive revenue since. Octopus Card is 100x better than crappy Opal card
Rubbish implementation, more expensive, waste of taxpayers money. And you need a credit card.
Apparently the governament thinks the paper tickets are too cheap so they force you to get on to Opal.
I won't consider Opal unless they get rid of paper tickets all together.
+1 for Octopus
I thought Opal adopt Octopus system. To start with, the idea is good, we going to there, its just the price that matters
Guys i dont see where is this coming from that you can make several short trips to make up 8 Paid trips this is completely bogus,
Ready Opal TC they only count 2 paid trips per day towards your 8 weekly paid trips discount.
So in general if you make 4 paid trips in 1 day they only going to take 2 paid trips out of them to consider 8 weekly paid trips.
So if you make 2 short trips and 2 long trips and end up paying $15 a day how does this going to be calculated cheaper.
Who is not thinking with their head.
City Rail people are not stupid they are only there to charge you more thats why they only discontinued tickets which were calculated cheaper than opal to make Opal work.
Because after Initial Launch of Opal until now they are only able to score less than 150000 registered but actual people are using it are far less even half of this figure.
City Rails Huge investment at risk if people are not buying it.
After excessive failed marketing and blowing millions of Taxpayers dollers for marketing now they take they Bullying path.
So decided lets remove discounted Tickets and force Public Transport Users.
I was just wondering if is there any consumer commission or any Govt. Body looks at them and ask them not to go ahead with this.
You are absoluately correct. Opal implementation is a failure same with their marketing….just now they are forcing this upon civilians as they can't get money back on how much they spent on Opal project. So to do this they need to discontinue paper tickets and force you bully you until you pay up.
Unfortunately its the governament and there's nobody you can complain to.
Same with the budget
Ready Opal TC they only count 2 paid trips per day towards your 8 weekly paid trips discount.
Bzzzt. Wrong. I've been taking a short train trip during my lunch break and it definitely counts towards the 8 weekly paid trips. i.e. 3 paid trips a day until I hit my 8th trip on Wednesday lunch.
What day is the start day they count as a first trip? Monday? Or the day I start swipe the card in that week?
Reason for asking is because my working day is Wednesday to Sunday (Mon-Tue is my day off). The trick seems not a benefit for someone like me..but its handy for most people. +1 for that.Another thing, how 'short' is it a short trip? Within an hour you have to tape off at the station you start? Or if I tape off at any station will be calculated as one trip?
I am even thinking Australian Corruption Commission should look at this Matter at what Galdy Berjiskian is doing?
So much money wasted on Marketing and this project is still unsuccessful because its costly and public will not buy it.
They even increased tickets pricing right after introducing Opal to lure public into this and still failed.
All these actions are simply unfair to public.
What ever they are doing is not fair with the public who is using Public transport they simply just cannot force public to pay more because they have introduced a new way of ticketing.
Where is Australian Consumer commission or they also bribed for this to close their eyes?
Where are public rights to deny this change?
They don't care if the public takes it or not. It is forced upon everyone to sign up. This removal of selected paper tickets is only the beginning. I see they want to get rid of it all together by beginning of next year
To the earlier comment re "they only count 2 paid trips per day towards your 8 weekly paid trips discount"
This statement is incorrect. In actual fact, you can achieve your weekly travel reward in a single day costing a total of $15, meaning the remainder of the week's travel is free (anywhere on OPAL network). This is achieved by taking 8 x 0-3 km bus journeys in a day being (7 trips x $2.10 = $14.70 + the 8th trip at a discounted price of $0.30, as you reach the daily travel cap at $15.00 per day). Admittedly, it is a bit of a PIA to achieve, as an 60 mins needs to elapse before commencing subsequent journeys, and that the rollout to buses is at present limited, albeit steadily increasing.
To do similar short journeys only by train to achieve travel reward, will require a minimum of 2 days, as the minimum off peak fare on a train is $2.31 (min $17.31 to achieve weekly travel reward)
Another quirk of the system is that a maximum of 4 trips can be taken within the 1 OPAL journey before it ticks over to the next journey, irrespective of the 60 min transfer rule. So for instance, if you were to do 5 one-way trips on OPAL between Town Hall and Wynyard, and happen do that in 25 mins, then OPAL will record 2 journeys.
Probably all discussed in prior threads, but worth re-iterating
I think that for those able / willing to make a small change in their regular commuting habits, you can achieve a decent saving under Opal. Admittedly the new system may penalise infrequent, and mutli-modal users of the system under the current fare structure
the above is almost correct, what i know:
the 8 trips counted to the weekly travel reward have to be FULL paid trips.
so for example in one day after you do 7 trips you paid $14.80, then the eights trip will not be counted because you hit the daily limit and only pay 20cents and this is not FULL paid trip.In OPAL transaction records, (assuming the bus example) the 8th trip shows as a paid fare ie $2.10, but with a discount of -$1.80, to bring it back to the $15 daily cap. So the discounted trip of $0.30 is counted towards the 8 journeys.
Just read this article, pretty much sums it up
http://gyrovague.com/2014/02/23/sydneys-screwed-up-smartcard…
Should be changed to Gladys screwed Sydney again…
They haven't even made the part where inspectors can check your opal. Just show them the card and your free to run, then when arrive at non apal stations your free like a bird.
Haha people have been caught. Inspectors have scanners for opal. It's no longer free
This really sucks. If Opal was good value they wouldn't have to discontinue these tickets. They should openly admit that this a forced price rise for long distance daily commuters. And why do the bus passengers still get there discounted 10 pass. The most abused ticket in public transport - Everyone buys a travel 10 section 1 and rides as many sections as they like. All my colleagues at work do it. Massive scam that they still get to abuse.
Would assume it's because not all buses will have Opal by Sept 1?
Opal is a waste if you're not travelling more than 8 journeys per week. I only travel around 3 so the paper is a lot cheaper
AM i the only one thinking Melbourne is so update with technology? Myki has been around for 2 years!
It's actually been 4-5 years since it was first introduced, would you believe it?
lol Octopus Card has been for 20+ years. I don't know wh you feel proud have Myki. It's also a rubbish system
I am not interested in an opal card. I work with hundreds of people who have ongoing problems with them, double charging, over charging etc
I do not use a credit card I am a cash payer & I like to pay as & when I travel.
A lot of us will not be using trains from September 1st as we are being bullied into using a service we are not interested in. I think we should all be given the choice and not treated like children.
Haha, stop acting like a child then.. Of course there are going to be teething issues with a new system rollout. That part of the reason they are rolling out the service bit by bit, to iron out all the issues before it it network wide. You sound a bit like my old man. Adverse to any kind of change.. I bit you were spitting chips back in the day when they 'bullied' you into giving up 1c & 2c coins.
since sydney will use opal maybe you can move to other city lol
I'm trying to work out whether to buy my yearly train ticket tomorrow from a train station, or whether to take a chance on buying it online after 1 September.
https://tickets.sydneytrains.info/
(my current quarterly doesn't expire till end of September)
Does anyone know if you can still buy yearly train tickets, using the online method, after 1st September?
According to this SMH article, http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/opal-card-swipes-out-14-paper-tick…
"Commuters can still buy long-term tickets online."
Mytrain 90 day 20-35km= $410 = $31.9
Opal equivalent $37.60
Opal will cost more than MyTrain 90