Australian Cities | Charting Transport

How complex is Sydney’s new MyZone PT fare system?

Sun 14 February, 2010

Related to another post reviewing fare systems, here is a more detailed look at Sydney’s new MyZone fare system, that starts in April 2010.

If you think Sydney is about to get simple integrated multi-modal fares, read on.

The following charts compare the costs of the different MyZone tickets for different travel distances (note: ferries kick up a fare level after 9km) assuming travel to and from central Sydney (it is yet another ball game if you are not travelling into the city centre).

Starting with single fares…

Ferries are clearly expensive. And there is a curious overlap between buses and trains. If you have a choice, then buses are cheaper for travel under 2kms and over 35kms (but no doubt slower).

Unfortunately MyTrain and MyMulti have weeklies, while buses and ferries have TravelTens. The following chart shows buses and ferries with 10 and 14 trips, compared to MyTrain and MyMulti weeklies.

If you use buses 14 trips a week, then a MyMulti is better value, but only if you are travelling between 5 and 35kms. If you use buses 12 trips a week, then a MyMulti might be good value, but only if you travel 5-10km trips. And if you don’t know whether you will be making 10, 12 or 14 trips, then you have to make a guess and you might rip yourself off, or you might not.

And don’t even think about MyFerry TravelTens if you are using ferries at least 5 days in a row.

What about quarterly?

Trains are now cheaper than buses for everything over 2kms.

So now if you use buses 14 trips a week, a MyMulti is worthwhile if you travel more than 2 kms. But if you travel 12 trips a week, then MyMulti is worthwhile between 5 and 10kms, but probably much the same as a MyMulti between 10 and 35kms.

But if you travel more than 10kms and only use trains in MyMulti Zone 1, then MyMulti is better, even if you make 10 bus trips a week.

Are you following?

Finally, yearly:

It looks like the MyTrain yearly for over 65kms is actually a product no one should buy – you are better off with a MyMulti 3 yearly!

If you can avoid buses, you’ll save money with a MyTrain ticket on most travel distances.

But on the buses, the MyMulti is better value when travelling 11-14 trips per week for more than 2kms. For 5-10kms get yourself a MyMulti if you are travelling 10 times a week. But if you are going to average 11 trips a week, then a MyMulti yearly is borderline with MyBus for 10-35 kms.

But they were all simple comparisons with fixed distances to and from the inner city. While MyMulti and MyFerry tickets are based on distance from the city, MyTrain and MyBus tickets are on distance between stations and stop.

In fact a MyMulti 1 might be worthwhile if you frequently travel in the outer suburbs on buses, even if it is not valid for the trains in those outer suburbs.

And there is plenty more complexity.

What’s the best fare product for you if:

you make 10 x 20km trips per week and 4 x 5km trips per week?
you occasionally also take the train? in one direction only? for return trips? in the peak? in the off-peak?
you use multiple modes but don’t travel into inner Sydney?
you usually use the train but sometimes use the bus?
only travel occasionally but like to make stopovers on the way?
have a choice of two journey paths, one faster involving a transfer, and one slower but without a transfer?

And is there one website where can you find out where sections points are on any bus route in Sydney?

I trust it is not just my head that is spinning trying to think through this.

So unfortunately it is still extremely difficult to work out what is likely to be best value for your travel in Sydney, because different modes have inconsistent fares, inconsistent fare bands, and inconsistent ticket products. And there are sometimes even unintended fare incentives to avoid certain modes or transfers even they mean a faster trip.

The alternative?

I am a fan of consistent multi-modal fares because they avoid most of the complexity found in Sydney. See another post for what might be the best attributes of a fare system.

In any other city in Australia, each of the above charts will have only one line that applies for all modes (and usually regardless of transfers). The only choice you might have to make is whether to go for periodicals (passes) or multi-trip tickets/a stored value smartcard. That choice depends on how many times you travel per week.

In Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra you need to compare the weekly cost of using multi-trip tickets at the frequency you travel to the cost of a weekly, and work out which is cheaper. Then if they are close, you might want to compare them with monthlies. And it essentially doesn’t matter what mode you use, or how many times you transfer to get from A to B.

In fact here are the comparisons:

In Melbourne 10 trips on a 10×2 hour ticket is the same as a weekly, and 37 trips is the same as a monthly (about 8.5 trips per week).
In Brisbane 12 trips on a go card is about the same as a weekly, and 47 go card trips cost about the same as a monthly (about 11 per week).
In Canberra a weekly is the same as 11 trips using Faresaver 10 tickets, and a monthly is 36 trips (about 8 per week).

In Adelaide a multi-trip ticket is a no-brainer (there is no weekly or monthly).

In Perth and Hobart you are always better off with a smartcard.

But for Sydney you almost need to get a spreadsheet going to suss out the best fare product(s) for a particular trip from A to B.

Or just go with something that works knowing you are probably paying too much.

Or just drive a car.

Other commentary on the new Sydney fares:

Action for Public Transport (NSW)

Western Sydney Public Transport Users

Melbourne on Transit

Daniel Bowen

Life Hacker

1 Comment | Australian Cities, Pricing | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Urban density and public transport mode share

Sat 16 January, 2010

Are all the statistics we see about urban density and transport reliable?

In his most recent book Transport for Suburbia (and his paper to ATRF 2009), Paul Mees highlights mis-use of urban densities figures by some researchers – the trouble being inconsistent determination of what exactly is the urban area of a city when you calculate density (= population/area).

To redress the issue of data quality, Paul has used calculations based on the actual urbanised area for Australia, US, Canadian and English cities (looking at entire greater metropolitan areas). He’s used figures based on urbanised areas as opposed to a statistical district, municipal council area, or other arbitrary administrative boundary which could contain large areas of non-urbanised land.

The calculations define urbanised areas using the following criteria:

US and Canadian cities: minimum 400 per square km,
Australian cities: minimum 200 per square km (meaning Australian cities might be slightly understated)
English cities: detailed mapping, likely to lead to slighty higher density figures.

So the calculations are not perfectly aligned, but they are more comparable than density calculations that use simple administrative boundaries. And they are also certainly consistent within each country.

He publishes tables of this data, talks about the relationships between them, but for some reason fails to plot the results on a chart. So I’ve decided to chart them (if you are after the data tables consult the ATRF paper above and/or the book).

The table of data is quite interesting in that it debunks some myths about the densities of various cities. Los Angeles is the highest density city in the entire table (the Freakonomics blog has a good series on Los Angeles Transportation: Facts and Fiction that is worth reading).

Firstly, car mode share in journey to work:

Is there a relationship between urban density and car mode share on journey to work? What do correlation coefficients say (closer to 1 and -1 means stronger) – something Mees didn’t calculate:

Australia: -0.74
Canada: -0.58
US: -0.46
England: -0.68

That suggests a relationship does exist, but it isn’t particularly strong. In reality, every city has unique characteristics and other attributes will explain the differences (the quality of services and infrastructure of alternative modes would certainly have a lot to do with it).

Looking at some outliers:

London has the highest density and lowest car mode share. It compares so favourably to all other English cities in car mode share, despite being only slightly more dense than Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton (one combined urban area).
Canadian cities with the lowest car mode share are Toronto (highest density) and Victoria (second lowest density).

What about public transport mode share for journey to work?

This chart shows relationships stronger in some countries than others. Indeed the correlation coefficients are:

Australia: 0.79
Canada: 0.87
US: 0.42
England: 0.58

So much stronger relationships in Canada and Australia. Again there is a lot at work (particularly the quality and quantity of available public transport, which is one of Paul’s points).

In terms of outliers:

London is off the chart at 45.9% public transport.
Brisbane is perhaps an outlier for Australia – low density but pretty much the same rate of public transport use as Melbourne.
Los Angeles – which actually has the highest density of all the US cities but still relatively low public transport use.
The city with the highest PT mode share in the US is New York, even though it isn’t the most dense city in the US (there is lots of sprawl outside Manhattan).

The following walking chart might seem to suggest a strong relationship when you look at all cities, but remember that the density measurements aren’t quite the same, so it’s not fully conclusive. However, English cities still tend to have higher densities, particularly as many have green belts to prevent sprawl.

There is actually a negative correlation between density and walking (and cycling) for Australia and Canada. However I wouldn’t read too much into that as the sample size if small and there are lots of unique factors affecting each city.

But if you reckon there should be a positive correlation between walking and density, the outliers are:

Victoria (Canada) – low density but high walking mode share.
San Francisco and Los Angeles have low walking share.
Hobart – highest walking share in Australia, despite low density (and a big river dividing it in two).
Toronto – Canada’s most dense walking city, but least walking mode share
London – highest density but lowest walking share (9.2%)

Same again for cycling:

It looks like almost no one cycles in the US, despite having more favourable climate than Canada. Again higher cycling rates in the UK.

Cycling outliers:

Victoria (Canada) – high walking and cycling mode share
Kingston upon Hull (UK) 11% – off the chart’s scale (Mees suggests a large university may be the cause)
Canberra – which has a good network of bike paths (but still only 2.5% cycling mode share)
Sydney – with just 0.7% cycling – hilly terrain not helping.

What if you add up all the sustainable transport modes (PT, walking and cycling)? In theory, density should help all sustainable transport modes.

The correlations are:

Australia: 0.77
Canada: 0.62
US: 0.44
England: 0.70

The English result is actually stronger than PT (0.58), walking (0.32) and cycling (0.02). Do people respond to density using different, but sustainable modes?

Can public transport be effective in low density cities?

Paul’s main argument is that low transport density isn’t a barrier to successful public transport, and that it is easier to change public transport provision in a city, than it is to change urban densities (not that increasing urban densities isn’t a worthy goal).

Certainly urban density makes it easier to make public transport successful, but I’d agree that it is possible to make public transport work a lot better in low density environments.

Indeed, in Melbourne, relatively high quality SmartBus routes (that run every 15 minutes for most of the day on weekdays, very good by suburban Melbourne standards!) have been trialled in the outer suburbs, and the patronage response has been much stronger than typical elasticities (the subject of another post).

More generally, in Melbourne over the last three years we’ve seen a very strong correlation between growth in service provision (26% more kms) and growth in patronage (29%) – more than any other potential driver of patronage (again, topic for another post).

Comparable cities for population and density

Finally, by plotting population and density, you can see which cities are most similar – at least in these two respects (I’ve only looked at cities under 7 million and UK cities are off the density scale). I’ve labelled Australian cities and nearby equivalents. Note: the US and Canadian data is year 2000, while Australia is 2006.

8 Comments | Australian Cities, Melbourne, Mode share, Urban Planning | Tagged: Density | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Car and transit use per capita in Australian cities (Peak Car)

Fri 8 January, 2010

[post updated in January 2016 with data from the 2015 BITRE Yearbook. For some more recent data see this post published in December 2018. First published January 2010]

Thanks to the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics’ Australian Infrastructure Statistics Yearbook 2015, a great set of time series data is available on transport behaviour. This post looks at trends in private and public transport use in Australian cities up until 2013-14.

The first chart shows car passenger kms per capita peaked in 2004 for all cities and has been mostly in decline since then (with the possible exception of Adelaide in recent years).

This is clear evidence of “peak car” use per capita in Australian cities.

Canberra has the highest car passenger kms per capita – perhaps due to the low density city, relatively sparse bus services, and general ease of using private transport.

The underlying figures show relatively little growth in total car passenger kms in most cities in the ten years since 2003-04:

Perth has shown the greatest increase in total car passenger kms despite the reduced car use per capita, presumably mostly reflecting strong population growth. Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne show a flat-lining in car passenger kms between 2004 and 2009 (a period of time that is becoming very familiar on this blog). I’m not sure why Adelaide has seen declining car passenger kms (it’s population did grow over this period by 10%).

Does this mean we are travelling less? The following chart shows estimated motorised passenger kms per capita, and yes in all cities there was a peak in 2003-04 followed mostly by declines. This might be people taking shorter trips, people taker fewer trips, and/or people substituting motorised transport with non-motorised transport.

There is another story in the data. Mass transit passenger kms per capita rose significantly in Melbourne and Perth between 2005 and 2011:

However, more recently there have been slight declines in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, and Canberra.

Sydney shows up with many more mass transit kms per capita than any other city (68% of which is on rail). While I am not sure exactly how BITRE sourced their train patronage data for “Sydney”, my experience is that patronage data is only readily available for a very wide definition of Sydney’s railways including lines beyond the Sydney Statistical Division including Newcastle, Nowra, and the Hunter Valley.

You can also see a spike in mass transit use in Sydney in 2000/01 – the year containing the Olympic Games.

Previous strong growth in Brisbane might reflect considerable investment in bus services (BITRE have published three years of bus data showing Brisbane increasing from 53.0 million kms in 2005-06 to 61.2 million kms in 2007-08). More recent stagnation in mode share might reflect above-CPI fare rises and changes to patronage measurement methodology.

The data also allows a calculation of mass transit’s share of motorised passenger kms:

Melbourne and Perth are the stand outs for mass transit mode shift based on these figures, particularly in the years leading up to 2009. Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane also saw mode shift between around 2004 and 2009, but Adelaide and Brisbane have gone backwards since then.

Note there are other ways to more directly measure transport mode share – primarily household travel surveys, covered in another post.

Finally, here is a stark comparison of total car and mass transit passenger kilometre growth since 2003-04 (with population growth included for reference):

Car use has grown more than four times slower than population growth, and almost seven times slower than mass transit use.

Business as usual no longer

In the frequently cited BITRE 2007 report on congestion costs, they made a “business as usual” assumption that mode shares will not change (ref page 8) and that car use per capita would increase (ref page 47), and then forecast that avoidable congestion costs in Australia will more than double between 2005 and 2020. The latest BITRE evidence is that mode shares are not business as usual in most cities and that car use per capita is decreasing. See another post reviewing the forecasts of the costs of congestion.

An updated 2015 BITRE report on the costs of congestion looks at the issues of per capita vehicle user into the future in a bit more detail, including acknowledging researchers highlighting peak car.

Their new high case scenario assumes the recent downturn in per capita vehicle use is essentially all GFC related (and has persisted for 10 years), and that things will now bounce back to old patterns (and grow even faster than the 2007 forecast). Their medium case also assumes a reversal of trend, but that we’ll only return to the previous peak level by 2030, and a low case continues the current trend.

The following chart shows forecasts compared to estimated actual vehicle kilometres per capita.

The 2007 forecast was not only trending in the wrong direction, their starting assumption about vehicle km per capita for 2007 was well above the (revised) estimated actual.

The new estimates for the “avoidable social costs of congestion” in 2030 are $48.2b for the high case, $37.3b for the median case, and only $25.1b for the low case. BITRE suggest this median estimate is the upper range of what is plausible, but if current trends continue, the avoidable social costs of congestion would be a third lower.

See also a recent piece on this subject by Professor Peter Newman in The Conversation.

Some disclaimers:

I’ve called it “mass transit” as the data does not seem to differentiate public, school and private bus passengers. Passengers on chartered buses aren’t usually considered “public transport”, but they still are a very space efficient way to move people on roads.
km figures are reported on financial years, while population figures are for June at the end of that financial year. So the “real” per km figures are slightly less, but I’m really just looking at trends and relative numbers here.

1 Comment | Australian Cities, Melbourne, Mode shift, Road Traffic | Permalink
Posted by chrisloader

Charting Transport