Yesterday, Greater Wellington Regional Council proposed an increase to bus and train fares in Wellington from 1 October.
There are a bunch of things going on behind this decision by Greater Wellington to raise fares.
- It’s clear that funding for public transport is stretched across the board. NZTA has announced that its policy is to have a 50% recovery of cost from the fare box by 2015. GWRC’s current fare box recovery policy is between 45% and 50%.
- GST is increasing from 12.5% to 15% on 1 October.
- Greater Wellington is starting to position new services it is implementing like Real Time Information and the new trains. These new services need funding to support them.
The table below summarises the changes from cash fares and Snapper fares today and on October 1st, and the new saving when paying by Snapper over cash.
There are five major changes
- The City Section doubles in price from $1 to $2 for cash (keeping it as a single gold coin)
- A specific Snapper / smartcard fare for the city section is introduced at a 50 cent discount to the cash price.
- One zone Snapper / smartcard fare increases from 1.20 to 1.60 to stay in line with city section pricing
- All other cash fares increase by a straight 50 cents per zone.
- Snapper and other smartcard fares increase by 2.5% to reflect the increase in GST for prices outside of the city section.
So, prices for cash are increasing significantly from 1st October. While we would all prefer for that not to happen, we are pleased that the Snapper pricing is only increasing by 2.5% for most fares and that the relative increase for the city section is significantly less than the 100% increase for cash.
It also means paying by Snapper will no longer be an easy to remember 20% discount outside of the city section. Instead it will mean a saving of between 20% and 39% when you travel with Snapper on the bus, depending on where you travel.
We have run some scenarios of what the price changes will mean for existing cash-paying commuters. Let’s take a quick look at three examples of this:
Scenario 1 – Quick Trips Through the City
If you travel city zones regularly, you’ll pay for the cost of your Snapper card in 21 trips, or 4 weeks.
| Price per journey | Reloads | Total @21 trips | |
| Cash | $2.00 | 0 | $42 |
| Snapper | $1.50 | 2 x $0.25 | $32 |
Scenario 2 – Medium Journeys, Quick Payback
If you travel two zones, you’ll pay for the cost of your Snapper card in 11 trips.
| Price per journey | Reloads | Total @11 trips | |
| Cash | $3.50 | 0 | $38.50 |
| Snapper | $2.46 | 2 x $0.25 | $27.56 |
Scenario 3 – Long Journeys, Fastest Payback
If you travel five zones (add a regular 5 zone trip in here), you’ll pay for the cost of your Snapper card in 8 trips.
| Price per journey | Reloads | Total @8 trips | |
| Cash | $6.00 | 0 | $48.00 |
| Snapper | $4.51 | 2 x $0.25 | $36.58 |
The assumption is that 5 single trips are taken on average, per week. It may be less or more for you, but this gives you a good idea of just how fast you’d recoup the purchase price of a Snapper card. We’ve also assumed that customers top-up their Snapper cards by about $20 at a time, so we’ve built the retailer top up fees into this as well. If you top up online or at a Snapper Kiosk, it’s free.
Of course, there are other benefits to paying by Snapper including being able to race through the queue at Subway, and saving 30% on mainstream movie tickets at Reading Courtenay Central all day, every Monday.
In fact, you could recoup the cost of your Snapper in one entertaining cinematic afternoon. All you’d have to do is pay for two Snapper Monday movie tickets at Reading (saving $8)and pay for two city section journeys on the bus (saving $2), and you’d be in the black.
How will these price changes will affect you?
Are you or anyone you know now better off paying with Snapper instead of cash?
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Other fare changes include the abolition of Go Wellington monthly Gold Pass and Bus King passes, and Daytripper tickets increasing in price by 50%.
Is Snapper going to step into the breach?
i’m a bit confused here, so please clarify this for me…
if i’m reading the table correctly you’re saying that that with cash the City Section and Zone 1 become the same fare. $2
which essentially abolishes City Section
but with Snapper, City Section becomes $1.50 and Zone 1 becomes $1.23
why on earth would City Section be more expensive than Zone 1 ?!?!
it’s worth noting that on the concil’s version of the proposed fare changes, Zone 1 for “stored value cards” is $1.60
http://www.gw.govt.nz/assets/council-reports/Report_PDFs/2010_324_2_Attachment.pdf
so which is it Snapper, did you publish the wrong info for Zone 1 or are you changing the fare to $1.23
Allyn
You’re right – mistake on our part. We’ll correct the table and wording now
Miki
good to see the snapper discounts are still being offered and increasing but the council really are gouging on the short-haul fares which are already considered expensive.
Also removing the monthly passes and gouging the day tripper will only shove piles of people back into cars, a total shame.
@Anton
at the risk of defending GWRC, there appear to be genuine reasons to put the prices up through the increase in GST ( a real cost) and the fact that percentage subsidy from NZTA is going to drop over time from 55% to 50%.
What do you think is the way to pass on the increase in costs?
Miki
I think the hikes should be around that mark, not the 100% proposed for the city stage and 17-30% approx for the 1-2 stages.
I’m more than comfortable with the standard price increases but the attack at the lower end seems unjustified.
Good to see that snapper discounts can be more than 20% now, definitely a positive achievement
According to NZTA theWellingtron fare recovery is at present 55%, not 48% (GW) and is the highest cost recovery rate in NZ.
If this is right, then we should be lowering the fares a little, not raising them. The GST increase is a separate issue.
The difference appears to be GW’s inclusion of capital expenditure into the calculation.