Thread: Cost of public transport - UNREASONABLE!

Originally Posted by isuzutoo-eh

If you are only going 3km, ride a bicycle, skateboard, pogo stick or just walk. Not like its far. You might even feel good at the end of your short journey.

If I'd had my bike with me I would have. Can't ride a skateboard to save my life!!!

Trying to duck into town on the spur of the moment in the space of a 1 hour lunch break leaves not a lot of room for walking. Honestly I would have walked if time wasn't an issue.

(..... another bitter rant)

Yep - Brisbane's public transport just sucks. There's no other way of putting it. It's gone backwards since the fifties when they started pulling up train lines and killing off the trams. As JDNSW mentioned, the "accidental" fire in the Paddington tram depot in 1962 was a farce.

What is with the obsession with buses? Every other city in the world uses trains, because they work, but here we spend billions of dollars on busways so we can sit on a bus under the Queen Street Mall for ten minutes during peak hour, just trying to get out of the bus station and through the traffic to said busways.

And then there is the cost. Even with the Go Card discount and me being able to salary sacrifice my public transport costs, it's still not viable. Anna Bligh has already outlined the increases to fares over the next couple of years, because that's what you have to do when you sell off the freight division of Queensland Rail which was making huge profits to cover the passenger services.

I'm a car enthusiast, but I'm also an environmentalist. I see cars as a luxury; something to be enjoyed and appreciated, not relied upon. I ride my bicycle to work a couple of days a week, lane splitting peak hour traffic along narrow laned arterial roads. I can't do it every day because it's 20km each way, and it's only a matter of time before I end up under a truck (or a magpie pecks my eyes out ). The other days I'm stuck with the train, but at least I'm very fortunate that the Ferny Grove line suffers very few problems by comparison.

It pains me to to say this, but any more increases in fares are going to be enough to tip me over the edge and buy a motorbike. Where's the incentive to burn less fossil fuels?


James.

Government don't want the hassle and responsibility of running public transport and private business doesn't know how to make money out of it (or have too much money tied up in the competing industries).
A whole lot of our society/systems are broke... We need a new system. Or at least to look back a few generations to find answers that were less about $'s and more about the needs of the people/country.

You'd be hard pressed to beat Melbourne I reckon. I just spent two days there and got about for approx $7 per day full fare - all day - on any mode of transport

I've just had to waste the morning walking around Stinkney, and the difference is considerable bloody noisy buses nose to tail and traffic is crap.

Chalk and cheese!

Melbourne is awesome compared Brisbane. Get off the tram at a pub, have a beer, get on the tram, get off at the next pub, have a beer, get on the tram......

Originally Posted by rainman

Melbourne is awesome compared Brisbane. Get off the tram at a pub, have a beer, get on the tram, get off at the next pub, have a beer, get on the tram......

I like your thinking

How ironic the timing of this thread.

Here in Adelaide I don't feel its overly expensive for what you can get, about 9 bucks for an all day ticket, and about 5 bucks for a 2 hour, but if your not going far, yes its ALLOT. There is a two zone ticket but I am unsure about what its for.

Ironic timing, as our transport dept CE is getting some bad press about cutting down the number of car parks in Adelaide and encouraging people to use public transport. Glut of inner-city spaces hampers traffic reform | Adelaide Now

If I was on my own, I might look at public transport, but I have to admit in general Adelaide's is fairly lacking, and unless you live on one of few major routes, you have to get interconnecting services to get into town, for me its easily an hour and a quarter in the morning, and seems a bit quicker at night, whereas even in peak hour, my drive is only tops 45 minutes in the morning and less at night.

We seem to be expanding in all directions, and not putting in light-rail, which I feel should be part of all new large expansion plans.

That being said, my wife and I both work in town, we have the cheapest car park you can currently get, the 2 kilometer walk is good for me, and I run the P38 on LPG, I have worked out it cost's roughly $50 a month more for us to drive in. This is also based on the fact even if we didn't drive in, we would still be paying rego and insurance. but this is still worth it saving probably an hour of commute time a day on average, and also the gains from me picking up big heavy things from work at least once a week.

Currently it would cost me $250 (me and wife) for public transport just to get to and from work a month. I would happily pay more, if I could get light rail within a 1.5km walk of my house. I have 4 bus routes within 1km of my house but none of them go into town. I am 4km from the train station, and parking there is not an option.

I miss Melbourne's tram and train system, was the best of places I have lived.

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

Before they stopped the Sydney trams in 1960, Sydney had the largest network anywhere in the World. Now they have a private light rail that uses parts of the Darling harbour goods line. The kids cant use their School Transport card so must pay the commercial fare.

They are also attempting to get a new light rail line out to the Uni of NSW. Where until the last few years the tram corridor from Paddinghurst to Coogee and also out to La perouse still existed, now it has been sold off in parts for residential housing and used for council car parks.

There is a map of the Los Angeles tramway (trolley as they called it) network late 1920's on display at the Nethercutt Museum. There was 4,000 miles of track. The county elected officials decided to go with the motor car and build roads and bridges with their money. One of the guides, elderly chap, told me that as a boy growing up near Chicago in the 1930's he could go from Chicago to Indianapolis on the trolley. There was an extensive trolley network linking cities and small towns in Illinois and Indiana. Pittsburgh had hundreds of miles of trolley network. Even small cities like Lancaster, PA, had trolley networks serving the city and surrounding villages. All gone now.

You did not need to walk more than one city block in Brisbane to change from one tramline to another. When I was a lad the New Farm trams ran every ten minutes on weekdays and every fifteen on Sundays.