Trial starts on 6th December for a period of at least 1 Year.
Commuters will have access to free travel on all light rail services and bus services running from around 5:30am to 11:00pm, and light rail from 6:00am to 1:00am on Friday and into Saturday morning.
Commuters will still be required to tap on and off each service to support data collection, but will not be charged for the fare.
As was the last thing they rolled out when they did the shop small incentives lol… sooo much money for systems that can’t work
I thought this has ended last Tue no?
The new system has quite a few bugs and nobody is currently being fined for not having a card / not tapping etc. It'll take weeks/months to settle down and I can't see fines happening until the system is running smoothly for everyone.
Everything is free if you don't pay
TANSTAAFL.
Or someone else does…
NSW is doing nothing as always
Uh… why should NSW do anything?
We can get fk all that's what we get
At least we don't have to live in Canberra
@OzBrogains: lol i wish i was still a child living at home. It's because I've been around I know there are worse things than paid public transport, such as living in Canberra
NSW has bigger network and thousands more employees. Who's going to cover the costs and high wages of public transport employees, who get greedy and go on strike every so often?
Bend over the taxpayers. Right?
You are telling it's ok for them to go on strike. These people are the ones stopping metro and driver less trains.
I say they should be replaced asap
Completely agree, we should be spending those taxpayer billions on one extra lane on the highway as it will fix all the traffic congestion problems.
Breathing air is currently free in NSW
Toll charges on air coming in 2026.
Atleast bring back the sunday cap of $2.60 😞
Used to be $2!!
And bring back the 8 trip cap, every trip free after 8 pairs journeys - was to make sure weekly and quarterly paper ticket buyers were not worse off on Opal
And put the peak and off-peak times to what it was. They changed them 'temporarily' for covid, but it was never changed back.
"Hold my beer" - vic
"Hold my beer Commonwealth game" - vic. And just like that 100smil fly away
Fixed it for you
You already have Friday cap (same as weekend cap).
Look at VIC.. they are doing something.. more taxes!
Who bothers to pay?
450ish busses and a dozenish trams actually.
450ish busses and a dozenish trams actually.
Which works out at approximately 2 vehicles per paying passenger
Watch out ACT thinks it's a real city
More than that, it pretends it is a state government instead of a town council.
😂 And hardly any traffic congestion!
laughs in 20 minute commute
Comes with free live entertainment from eshays on R2
They should pay me for available brain time
My dull friend, the ACT Budget is funded by ACT taxpayers.
give it a rest with the unsubstantiated BS
https://www.themandarin.com.au/241682-state-of-the-territory…
about one quarter of ACT workforce work for APS
@HeXa: How many for ACT government? How many indirectly employed by the government as contractors/consultants? How many private sector jobs like PwC are paid for indirectly by taxpayers in Canberra? In the end it’s the vast majority employer directly or indirectly through federal funds.
@mustang87401: There are valid debates to be had about whether the public service is a few % too big or too small, but there's an objective need for a public workforce that can administer government programs and services. At the start of the 20th century a decision was made to create a new capital and develop another area of the country, if you're bitter about that and don't think the city should be able to offer free bus Fridays in 2024 I'm not sure what you're wanting to hear from us, or from anyone.
Queensland is currently doing 6 months of 50 cent public transport fares, Victoria implemented a $9.60 regional public transport daily fare cap (effectively cutting some fares by 75%) last year. States and territories are actively incentivising public transport usage to reduce road congestion and pollution. The ACT is one of them, but the comments section is always going to be a magnet for a few Sky News after dark types who want a fight but don't quite know why.
@mustang87401: I'm a pragmatist not a leftie, I'm similarly critical of hippies who think everything should come from the magical "free stuff" tree and never have to face the reckoning of a spreadsheet. In general, I have a problem with people who are blinkered by their political ideologies and can't resist injecting it into any conversation about anything.
As I already mentioned, every Wagga Wagga equivalent in Victoria had its public transport fares slashed last year. Free bus Friday in Canberra is equal to a 15-20% price reduction across the week, it's perfectly possible that NSW will roll out something comparable across the state. The NSW Gov't already provides major price subsidies to privately operated regional bus services… recently a contract (put in place when the Libs were running NSW) was set to expire and pensioner fares were going to jump from $2.50 to as much as $65. So yes, state governments spend plenty on making it compelling to travel on public transport in country areas, it just takes a different form to what they'd do in a larger city with a daily commuter base.
And yes, I agree that the 50 cent fares in QLD are probably unsustainable. So are limited-time sales at retailers. They're both designed to catch people's attention and build longer term patronage. The ACT free bus Friday thing is currently funded for 12 months.
Lefties can’t help themselves but always result to name calling
You defeat yourself in the same sentence.
@mustang87401: The most pathetic attempt at a comeback ever, come on lad, use your brain once in a while
@mustang87401: It is certainly true that absent the decision at federation that the national capital would not be Melbourne or Sydney to keep everyone else happy, the molongo valley would still be sheep country and the local regional centre would be a much smaller Queenbeyan.
Heck when I lived there I could almost see Lanyon Homestead from our place.
And most of current employment and population would even now not exist without an enormous underpinning of the APS and ACT public service behemoths.
But plenty of people do not directly work for the government.
@park: Actually it’s meant to be permanent in Qld.
I can see both perspectives: there are a lot of people that will pay the taxes to fund these freebies that cannot take advantage of it, particularly regional Qlders.
But it isn’t as though previous charges covered the cost of a trip. Last I saw a brisbane public transport trip averaged something like $17 while the fare is max around $5.
So the extra expense is about a third. There might be a lot of good policy reasons for this such as encouraging public transport use, although if you are going to drop it to 50¢ might as well make it free IMHO. I will observe, as a regular bus user, that there was an initial jump in use for about a month, but I reckon it has returned to what it used to be now.
Truth is it was not really about any good policy, it was city vote buying and leaving the infrastructure in place to increase the price later. The extent it saved the furniture for the former government is unknown, as the then opposition copied it anyway.
@entropysbane: "Last I saw a brisbane public transport trip averaged something like $17 while the fare is max around $5."
I imagine it's pretty hard to comprehensively calculate this stuff. If getting more people onto the train means you can defer a $5bn freeway expansion project by a decade that would need to be factored into the equation of "money we had to spend versus money we didn't have to spend" in some way.
i didn't realise Canberra was large enough to even have trains
My heart is broken.… 💔
It has a tram and buses. Canberra the city is about 800 square KMs. The ACT is about 2500 square KMs.
Used to think driving into Canberra that Northbourne avenue was beautiful, with its lawns and great big gums marching down the whole way. Shame it got destroyed with light rail.
I really hate light rail for Australia. Ugly, and in a highly decentralised town like Canberra, vastly inferior to a flexible bus service which can more easily go where more people live. Australia doesn’t have European cities. Thank goodness.
The gums are growing back. The original species was prone to dropping branches so was unsafe for an area with rails.
Light rail was in Walter Griffin's plan for Canberra a century ago, as was plenty of medium density residential buildings in central Canberra. Some of the people bemoaning Canberra changing don't acknowledge that it's arguably becoming more like how it was always supposed to be.
@park: There are a lot of things in Sir Walter Burley Griffin’s plan that have been substantially altered over time. Canberra is also vastly bigger and spread out than the original plan.
Given how spread out Canberra is, light rail is only for the benefit of people within easy walking distance of northbourne avenue and near the stations in Gunghalin. It is a terrible misallocation of resources. A ridiculously large expense that will be compounded by the Woden extension. The rest of Canberra gets nothing.
A bigger public bus system and perhaps a dedicated busway (like Brisbane) from Woden to civic would be cheaper and superior in almost every way.
@entropysbane: Yep, the Griffin plan was bent by (, among other things,) the mid-20th century trend of cars and suburban malls. But we know more about water, habitat and heat than we did 70 years ago. Plugging the town centres together with light rail and getting more three and four storey residential near the routes so it's well-used makes a decent amount of sense considering Canberra is trying to avoid bulldozing more bushland for hundreds of kilometres of new bitumen this century.
Studies have shown that people are simply more likely to use public transport if there's a tram nearby instead of a bus. There's sometimes intangibly more appealing about them, it seems.
@park: I would agree that a tram seems more appealing than a bus, but yes, it needs to be nearby.
Most Australians still prefer suburbia rather than being forced into Euro style apartment blocks, which is what would need to happen for trams to be viable in a place like Canberra.
@entropysbane: I think the next step for Canberra is allowing dual-occupancy developments in the 1970s suburbs full of 1000sqm house blocks that are 40 metres deep. It'd unlock so many opportunities for spacious single level dwellings in established suburban neighbourhoods that aren't too far from existing jobs and services. At the moment the rules force people in large parts of the city to choose between forking out $1.5m for a big ranch they mightn't even want/need, or a $500k place with shared walls, basements, strata fees etc. The "missing middle", they call it. As Canberra ticks past the half a million population mark, some of the country town policies no longer help the people.
They don't.
NSW when!? freaking lobbyist
Vic state would be financially better if they did this and didn't pay all those ticket checkers and extra protective officers needed for them
100%.
Add to that the billions wasted on the Myki system itself and the environmental and health benefits of having less cars on our roads..
Smart politicians would have just picked a system which works in another state and copied it
These days the proprietary systems are "close" to pointless….unless you are eligible for concession card like students or pensioners
There should be one card for whole of Australia's PTV. Called it Australia card or whatever. States can still choose their rates
Vic has a very bloated public sector. PTV offers horrible service despite being so bloody expensive at 10$+ per day. I hate it so much. PT is supposed to be cheap not expensive!
I have the opposite view, but I'm only speaking from me as a train user, where I travel from Geelong to Melbourne 2 times a week to watch footy, soccer, cricket, tennis, F1, rugby, shows, events etc, to visit family/friends and to ride the many great bicycle paths.
If by saying "bloated", you're meaning too many staff, I believe that there's not enough staff, especially at night. IMO no station should be unmaned whilst trains are operating.
When you say "horrible service", sure, trains are sometimes cancelled or deliberately go slower due to breakdowns, extremely hot days, trains hitting an animal or someone suicides (sadly that happened to my sister). Think about that when your train is late.
"Fares are not cheap." LOL The maximum fare you will pay for any trip is $10.60 pd (or $5.30 concession) Fares were $92 (Swan Hill), $68.80 (Bendigo) & (Geelong) $27.80!
@davebern: Lmao. Your examples are for regional area. Yea tickets can be justified for regional travel but 90%+ of customers travel within the metro region and 10$ is EXTREMELY expensive.
Trains are not "sometimes" cancelled. Buses replace trains REGULARLY. Go to any developed Asian country and see if/how that happens
All the state governments are trying different ways to distribute fee money.
VIC is also not behind, they are also in the race with this offer, "The School Saving Bonus, the Victorian Government is providing a one-off $400 to help families cover the costs of their kids’ school uniforms, textbooks, excursions and activities." 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Too bad it actually doesn’t reach the people - my kids tuition fee went up by $400 after this scheme was announced.
This sounds like the 10k home owner grant scam that pushes the price of the property by 10k 😞
The $400 is one time but the fee hike is forever, what a shame!
At least, the free public transport is far better than this.
Victoria are broker than a hobo, they should stop dishing out all this free money
Yep we broke as sh*t! I don't see it changing
Buying votes with handouts is a less complex approach than actually fixing the economy.
Watch what the Feds do prior to the next federal election.
it’s only future taxpayers paying for it, long after the current politicians are retired on indexed parliamentary pensions.
its already started with the student debt -> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/05/anthon…
Victoria is in financial ruin. Hm how do the Labor spinners reckon that worked with the LNP never in charge there in the last decade? Hm
Well, Hobbesian choice.
It would be difficult to vote for the Vic libs who seem much more interested in the comfortable life and salaries on the opposition backbench and getting invited to the right dinner parties than governing.
Why try to fix the mess when they would just get punished by the vic voters for it?
Besides, Victorians can always escape the consequences by fleeing to the warmer climate of Qld.
So vic Labor is not interested in comfortable life/salaries and not going to dinner parties with lobbyists? I mean come on they are in bed with special interests and unions maybe even more so than LNP. I think the argument saying vic LNP is disorganised is just lefties excuse for saying there is no alternative. At this point anything else is better than vic Labor. In fact Victoria did fantastic under LNP before so I don’t buy that argument.
@mustang87401: I would say the ALP actually has ideological convictions. For good or ill ( I would say mostly ill as the proof is in the pudding) for the rest of us.
What a joke MyWay+.
I register with fake/obfuscated data, you can be sure this crap will be hacked pretty quickly.
damn so jealous we dont have this. thanks for sharing op!
Come to brisbane. Im loving the 50c fares for all public transport.
yooo is that everywhere? really havent been there and need to check it out
I'm from Brizzie and the 50c fares introduced by Labor as a trial this year have been accepted to stay by the new LNP govt. A fabulous help for commuters, esp. those out a zone or two. My thoughts on ACT: if it is free, how do you get any stats? At least with 50c, that nominal amount is mainly there to gather stats. Re Sydney: I rate their PT because they do have weekly and monthly caps for regular users. Even a tourist can get a $10 cap (I think) for the week. Anyway I ride a bike to work - it's the best! Cheers all.
I think its more limit testing at that point? they have cameras to pick up on traffic volume i suppose?
"Passengers will still be required to tap on and off all bus and light rail services on Fridays to support data collection purposes but will not be charged any fares. Data collection allows us to plan for future timetable or network improvements."
cool, thanks
@debo it says you still need to tap on and off..
I am happy with 50c anywhere to anywhere in QLD.. including Gold Coast to Brissy.. a cool 90kms
![[ACT] Free Public Transport on Fridays for a Minimum of 1 Year @ Transport Canberra](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/31/880531.jpg?h=81dcb806)
It’s basically free at the moment too because the MyWay+ rollout is fked.