Better ticketing options would serve CityRail customers better

I use the North Shore line trains fairly regularly to travel from my electorate office in Lindfield into the city, and back.

While generally it is a pretty good service, there are some features that could be improved.  One that stands out for me is the fact that before every trip I need to buy a ticket.  Usually that is a mild inconvenience – but it can be seriously frustrating on those occasions when a train is pulling into the station just as you get to it and there is not time to buy a ticket before the train leaves.

Of course, if you buy a weekly or a monthly ticket you don’t have that problem.  But while that is good solution for one group of customers – those who use the train each day both ways into the city – it is not a good solution for those who do not use the train so regularly (but do still use it quite frequently.)

If the trains were run by a private sector business, its marketing team would not miss this opportunity.  People who use a particular train route quite frequently, but are not regular commuters, make up a particular ‘segment’ (to use marketing jargon).  Let’s call this segment the “frequent Irregulars”.  It would make sense to have a product designed to serve them.

Consider that a regular one way ticket from Lindfield to the city costs $4.40.  Now imagine if City Rail offered a 10 trip stored value ticket for $44.  People like me would have a strong incentive to buy it and keep it in our wallet – knowing that we had now saved ourselves the time delay of buying a ticket each time we went to the station, as well as removing the risk we presently face of arriving at the station only to miss a train which we otherwise could have caught because of the extra time needed to buy a ticket. 

Not only would this benefit customers; it would also bring benefits to CityRail. 

It would likely increase patronage from people in the frequent irregular category – in turn increasing CityRail’s revenue.  In addition, selling in advance brings financial benefits to CityRail, as it gets ten times $4.40 from me today as compared to ten times $4.40 received at different times over the next six to twelve months. 

There would also be operational benefits.  If fewer people buy tickets at the station, CityRail may be able to reduce passenger congestion in stations and possibly even reduce the time that trains wait at stations.

This is not a new idea.  Leading metro systems around the world, such as the MTR in Hong Kong and the Underground in London, have had ‘stored value ‘ cards in place for many years.  However, with New South Wales saddled with a hopeless state Labor government for many years, we saw an ongoing saga in which a contract to provide such a ticketing system was let but nothing was ever delivered. 

Fortunately, since the Liberal state government came to power, the very capable Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian has driven real progress.  A new stored value ticketing system, the Opal Card, began operations in December 2012 on the Neutral Bay ferry service, and it is to be progressively introduced across the state transport system.  In the second half of this year it will start to be introduced for train services, starting with the City Circle. 

Smart marketing delivers benefits to both customers – and the companies that serve them.  Failing to properly serve the ‘frequent irregulars’, as CityRail does today, is letting down the people in that segment – and missing an opportunity to both increase the number of people travelling by rail and maximise the revenue CityRail collects.