Cash or Prepay

Growing cashless services in the Sydney metropolitan region is motivated by the clear supply-side benefits associated with the prepayment of public transport fares. This paper examines the effect on prepay following the ‘MyZone’ fare and ticket reform in NSW introduced in April 2010. ‘MyZone’, introduced two new discounted and standardised prepay products, including a new, multi-modal ticket. Whilst these changes had implications for all public transport providers in the Sydney metropolitan area, it had significant ramifications for the many private bus operators who, for the first time, could provide and accept tickets which integrated their services with the state run rail, ferry and bus network. This paper reports the results of passenger surveys, undertaken ‘before’ and ‘after’ MyZone implementation, of a private bus operator in northern Sydney. The results show there are significant differences in the characteristics of passengers using multi-modal versus pay-asyou-go tickets and that this difference is driven largely by age, income and interchange. Prior to MyZone, prepay users were easily predicted and the fare and ticket reform was successful in transitioning some cash users to prepay but following MyZone’s introduction prepay users were no longer predictable unless separated into prepay product groups. Passengers who continued to pay cash after the fare and ticket reform showed high sensitivity to public transport cost and are those passengers with the lowest incomes. This suggests that there is no ‘one size fits all’ with public transport prepay ticketing and that passengers’ different motivations must be considered when designing prepay ticket products.