Fare-Free
Today the trains were free. This is very nice for the casual users, but worthless to anyone commuting. The discounted fare received by purchasing a weekly, quarterly, or annual ticket offsets any long-term benefit from one day free. My weekly ticket buys me 7 trips at 55% off the full-fare rate, so even if my ticket was going to be offset accordingly, there was no reason to buy four full-fare trips Tuesday through Friday. If I’d sat down to do the math, I might have saved myself $5 over the next two months simply by buying my ticket tomorrow and having the seven-day period run Tuesday through Monday, but that only works because my employer is granting us an additional four holidays ex gratia. Now, if John Brogden, opposition leader in the NSW parliament, gets the premiership, he’s promising one free day per month when the trains don’t meet a 75% on-time rate. If every month had a free day, I could do even better, maybe even save enough to pay for one week’s travel over the course of 2008, following the next election. No, sorry, it’s an empty promise, and I’m not biting. Instead, pledge to fix the system, then shut up and do it.