Gigantic bus ticket price rise

But you’re all forgetting the most important part about driving – that in catching a bus you don’t have to actively contend with the morons on Canberra’s roads – the can’t merge, the can’t indicate, the can’t understand that other road users exist crew..

Driving in Canberra is more stressfull than in Sydney.

It is worth noting for those calculating the coast of buses that you apy for an hour-long ticket.

So for example, if you catch one bus from your suburb to Belconnen interchange and then change to an intertown bus to get to Civic, you would buy one $3 transfer ticket and use it for both rides.

Do this in the morning and evening and it’s only $6 for four bus rides, not $12.

by not driving to work in any of my cars, my highest insurance payment is $320. as they are classics with strong demand they appreciate rather than depreciate (except for my ‘beater’ assembled from leftover parts). fuel is expensive, one tank is 85 litres. Thats two weeks of driving to and from work, plus parking of 6 bucks a day.

parking = 120 a month
fuel = 240 a month

rego and ins i’d normally pay anyway.

bus = 82 a month (from 1 july).

buses work for me – for now.

some people just wont catch buses or ‘loser cruisers’ – theres a distinct stigma.

i think light rail on the major volume routes and smaller nimbler buses which could handle roundabouts in the burbs would serve canberra better.

three years on from stanhope/corbells ‘sustainable transport plan’ and all act has to show are: bike lanes on roads, bike racks on buses, paid parking in town centres and $6 mil spent on a busway that was never going to be funded due to its stupid location and time travel claims.

Danman’s raised another relevant point – even if you leave the car at home therefore reducing fuel cost all your other costs stay about the same so the bus fare actually goes on top of those other costs – It’s essentially economically irractional to own a car and not drive it to work…

In any case – like someone previously said, I do all my own servicing – park free at the rex, commute regularly from Ngunnawal to Lyons on weekends and still scrape by at 40-50 dollars a fortnight for fuel. Sure I pay rego and insurance, but why would I then inflate my finances by catching buses on top of that when ( in my case ) it proves to be much cheaper and sensible to drive my vehicle.

$329 + $265 – 47 / 16 into 747 = ???? Oh yeah, buses. It matters not what it costs if you happen to be in a wheelchair, as Action is consistently unable to provide a reliable service. With at least 82 modified buses to service just 2 routes, you still have to take a chance that the bus guaranteed to be wheelchair friendly will come. How do you organise your life when you have to allow a two hour margin for when you will arrive at your appontments??? Why? Because “there weren’t any wheelchair buses left when I started my shift”. Forget the cost, improve the service.

On a side note, it’s interesting that the Action web site still says a single ride ticket is $2.50, and I couldn’t immediatly see anything about a price rise.

Has it come into effect yet?

caf, at $80 for a monthly ticket and 20 working days a month that’s $4 a day (x 2 for my partner)

My car at $4 a day is still cheaper then $8. but even if the bus was only $1 a day I still wouldn’t catch it. As I said it takes me an hour to get to/from work on the bus and only 10 mins by car. That 1hr 40 mins a day I loose travelling. Why would anyone pay more to take longer?

I just don’t think Canberra has the population density to support an efficiant profitable bus service.

A 20% rise eh? Well since the last rise the price of petrol has gone up by more than that, and petrol must be a significant proportion of their costs, so it seems fair to me.

If you got the bus to work every day you wouldn’t be paying $3-a-trip fares either, you’d get a monthly which works out to ~ $2 per working day.

$3 for the quality of service.. not worth it. If services were as regular as syd or melbourne. Melbourne is great, one ticket can get you a ride on train bus and tram.

No V8 I’m afraid – a 3.0 litre turbo diesel that gets around 10lt/100km – its just that I probably do close to 30,000km a year.

Hmmm brain fart there… replace the word Petrol with the word Insurance. There is nooo wayyy that I would be without insurance in this town. Too many BMW’s

I am in the same camp, Busses would cost me $12 per day, and the car is significantly cheaper.

I also do my own servicing, the car is only worth $2500, so there is no depreciation to speak of, but I do pay for petrol. Looking at the math, I believe that the car costs less than $9.20 per day.

And I don’t have to share the germs with the rest of the population. BTW, Any parking fees I incurr are simply charged onto the clients job.

Finally, don’t get me started on the wierdos!!!

In any case, we shouldn’t whine too much. I understand that a trip to sunny QBN costs just shy of $20 thanks to the power of Deanes bus lines…

The trouble with buses is that they often have Weirdos on them. The Bus Weirdo is always there, smelling and talking to itself or uttering sudden cries.

The equations become more complex when you need the car for the weekend and evenings (hobbies and social stuff), but are considering perhaps just using the bus to go to work. It just doesn’t seem worth it.

when did the ACT government start speaking yiddish?

Jebus Big Al, $100 a week in fuel & $750 for rego? What are you driving, a Centurion? I use less then $30 and my rego is $598. If you’re going to drive a V8 then pay the consequences.

My Calculations are roughly.

$500 depreciation (my car only depreciated $1000 in the last 2 years)
$1560 petrol
$0, Free work parking
$598 rego
$240 Servicing (I do it myself)
$450 Insurance

= $3348

That’s about $9.17 a day to run my car and considering my partner & I travel to work in the same car it would cost us $12 for busses.

+ It takes nearly an hour on the bus and only 10 mins by car.

Now consider that most people need a car outside work. Driving kids around, travelling etc which means Rego, Depreciation & Servicing etc are cancelled out. Taking that into account it makes it only $4 a day to drive my car. This saves us $2080 a year over bus fares.

I’m not sold on busses, I’ll stick to my gas guzzler!

the monthly ticket only rises by $2 which is somewhat fairer. its now $80.

This to me is much cheaper than firing up the stanley steamer every day (plus the parking costs).

So you’re that guys I see in the Dato 120Y!

Don’t get me wrong – I hate buses … I prefer to drive because I always get a seat, I can listen to what I want on the stereo, its warm in winter and cool in summer, I get all the way to my office door, I can use the car whenever I want rather than having to wait for a bus … I could go on.

You might be an exception Thumper, but my estimate would still stand for a vast majority of people in Canberra – I know my real costs are way more than that.

Not to mention the abstract timetable they catered for residents of ngunnawal going to civic early AM – dont mind me but ill be happy to drive and park my 1.3l car at the rex – it costs me 40 dollars a fortnight. Busses would cost 60 and I dont have the flexibility of getting stuff for dinner after work etc. Should be called (Sl)action

$5200 – petrol
$1200 – parking (200 days at $6.00 a day)
$750 – registration
$800 – Servicing
$600 – insurance
======
$13800
======
or $69/day

bugger knows what happened there..

In reality of course $12 is way cheaper than the real cost of using your car. No idea what you’re driving Thumper, but on a back of the envelope calculation the real cost of taking your car would be around $70 a day based on a car bought new for $35,000.

$5250 – Depreciation (at 15%pa)
$5200

It’s also probably designed to maximise the profits made from visitors, ie most regular users will buy a multi-trip ticket, whereas a tourist is more likely to buy a single trip ticket (and not really think about the price rise as they had no idea what the previous cost was anyway).

Exactly!

It has been alleged that cash payments on the bus slow the whole process down, and annoys fellow passengers.

It’s a good marketing move. Get people to commit to travelling ten times on the bus, instead of just once.

It’s like getting a 12 month gym membership!

Take a car instead.$3 is cheap.

But they are encouraging you to get a book of 10.