By Hayden Sinclair
Over the next six months, all public transport fares in Brisbane will be 50 cents, saving commuters an estimated $150 million in that time frame.
This policy will no doubt make a significant impact for many people who routinely use public transport, but it falls drastically short of the necessary steps to genuinely fix the system in its current broken state.
The Brisbane public transport system has earned a reputation for being slow, late and overcrowded.
The 50 cent fare policy was put in place to encourage people to hop on busses, trains and ferries but the cost was not stopping people from using the system; it’s the unreliability of the service.
The Brisbane public transport system ranks last overall among Australian major cities, in both reliability and bus stop availability.
Ironically, the service is probably only worth 50 cents.
Instead of cheap, band-aid solutions, the government should work on making the system more reliable, by hiring more drivers, security, and, to put it simply, building more busses and trains.
By creating a cleaner, faster, and reliable service, there would be no need to incentivise people to use the system.
This would also reduce traffic, put a significant reduction on carbon emissions due to less cars on the road, and increase tourism to parts of Brisbane outside the CBD.
Although it’s likely to save many people money, the 50 cent fair initiative is an incredibly short sighted one, focused on winning political points rather than actually improving the lives of the people of Brisbane.
Hayden is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based journalist currently undergoing a double bachelor’s degree in Communications Journalism and Business Marketing at QUT. He has a particular interest in sports and politics and is especially enthusiastic about public transport. He writes about the topics he feels most passionate about, while using data to inform both his opinions and readers.
