Well yeah Uber - I don't see it as PT but I know technically it is.
It's the last mile for me mate. After my 35 minute rail, 80 minute bus, I can either take another 30-40 minutes of local city bus ( I call it village bus because it's 3 cities <600K people ) or Uber gets me there in 10-15 minutes.
I live next to the main rail station and what you call CBD so I very rarely use Uber here because it's a pain to get through the cyclists, one way streets, construction and double parked cars to get picked up. I need to consciously find a side street to order one.
Strange days here -PT is all FREE at the moment for 2 -3 months- I see it as an election year gimmick with stupid knock on effects. Partly on long distance trains - over crowded so that theres no seats on 3 hour journeys.
Yeah I heard. It's the Iran war special. We're a net oil producer here. Petrol prices are high for reasons beyond anyone's comprehension. I know some people in Britain are saying they don't have refining capacity but they can dig for oil. We have everything here and the only people making money are the oil companies (moan, moan, moan).
We have double decker trains and on rush hour coming into the city (my city), you need to find a room to stand or get your face plastered against the window.
Our son lives up near the NSW border - 400ks away - so sometimes use train to go up and back -roughly a near 4 hour journey - now with free - you can't book a seat - so no way we are going to use train until fares come back and can book a seat.
That's quick by Canadian standards. Montreal is I reckon 500km away but it takes 5-6 hours (I'm talking closer to 6) because it shares rail lines with the freight trains.
A few years ago - in another ill thought through gimmick IMO - long distance fares were reduced /capped to $10 max each way - for us old people - $5 -so a return trip to Albury-Wodonga was around $10. But even that has knock on problems. Its so cheap people would book a seat beside them so they had 2 seats to themselves. Also cheap enough so that people would book 2 seats @ $10 each and not take them at all but no one else could book them
Flixbus is offering that as a "luxury" for inter city buses.
City transit is flat rate $3.25. The transfer window is I think 2 or 3 hours to encourage people to use it for short errands or for poor SOBs who must take multi bus/subway trips to get to their work and back. Every time they want to move to a zone based fare like London the social activists complain the poor will be unable to get to work.
Rail which is run by the province is by distance. It's an honour system where you tap on and off at the station but there aren't gates to stop you from getting on the train (unlike London). In that sense it's a bit similar to Munich but we don't have machine gun toting police - just regular blokes to come and ask you for your fare.
Where am in leafy suburban bliss (Luxury Living In The Heart of The Suburbs) 15ks from CBD its around 20mins - 30mins by train - 6 min walk to station. Free at moment but usually $6 max for daily ticket which includes buses and trams..
We just implemented "universal" fare which means your lower fare (let's say $3) counts against the higher rail fare when you transfer from subway to rail. When you go from rail to subway or city bus, it's free.
This was already working from rail to suburban transit buses to encourage people to stop parking their vehicles at the rail stations.
