New travel incentive means more commuters save with fairer fares

Published Sunday, 12 June, 2016 at 10:04 AM

JOINT STATEMENT

Premier and Minister for the Arts
The Honourable Annastacia Palaszczuk

Minister for Transport and the Commonwealth Games
The Honourable Stirling Hinchliffe

The Palaszczuk Government will accept the independent Fare Review Taskforce recommendation to scrap the wasteful ‘9 and free’ scheme and replace it with ‘8 and 50’ benefit so more public transport users ultimately save across the entire network.

Transport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe said 85 per cent of public transport users never qualified for the savings loophole and subsidised free travel for 15 percent of users at a cost of more than $100 million since it was introduced.

“The ‘9 and Free’ scheme only encouraged public transport users to game the system, it unfortunately failed to successfully pass on savings to a majority of regular public transport users or raise patronage levels,” he said.

“In fact since ‘9 and Free’ was introduced patronage fell by more than 2 million trips.

 “This new incentive will broaden the discount so it applies to more people and benefits the vast majority of passengers on public transport.

 “By spreading the savings more fairly, more Queenslanders will have an incentive to use public transport.”

 Mr Hinchliffe said instead of free travel after nine paid journeys, public transport users will receive a 50 percent discount on fares after eight paid journeys during a week.

 “The reality is 85 percent of users were not even qualifying for free travel, meaning they never received a benefit,” Mr Hinchliffe said.

 “By lowering the fare price and offering half price fares, more than 93 percent of public transport users will pay less.”

Media contact:         Jessica Hill 0475 950 772

Background –

Facts about ‘9 and Free’

 

  • Only 15 percent of public transport users qualified for ‘9 and Free’ per week
  • The go card ‘Nine and Free’ benefit will have cost taxpayers more than $100 million by the end of this financial year (2015-16).

 Example of how ‘8 and 50’, along with lower prices for zones will save commuters more than ‘9 and free’:

 

  • A weekday commuter who travels a single zone, to and from work during peak period, will save $1.30 a week with ‘8 and 50’ combined with the cheaper zone rates. Currently they pay $30.15 per week under ‘9 and Free’. With ‘8 and 50’ and $3.20 for a single zone of travel they will pay less, only $28.8 per week.
  • A commuter travelling on public transport during peak times from Goodna to Brisbane’s CBD each weekday for work, currently pays $5.96 per trip to travel across five zones and in a week with ‘9 and Free’ would spend $53.64 per week. Under the changes they will only travel two zones and pay $3.90 a trip and with ‘8 and 50’ will end up paying $35.10 a week. That’s a weekly saving of $18.54 with the cheaper zone prices and also ‘8 and 50’.