2014 Public Transport Fare Rise

So, as predicted a Public Transport Fare Rise has been announced for January 1 2014.  It brings a couple of nasty changes.

The three main changes:

The $3.50 weekend fare cap has risen to $6.00

From July 1, a two hour fare will now be exactly two hours.  So if you touch on at 7.39AM, your 2 hours expires at 9.39AM.  If you are intending to do a return trip in 2 hours, you need to ensure your return journey starts before the initial 2 hours expires.

and Fares have all risen approximately 2.4%.  See the full new fares at the PTV website.

In previous years I have done a spreadsheet showing some scenarios of travelling under myki, and I've updated it for this year.

I've changed it a bit: previously the best value for myki pass was to use a 33 day myki pass.  This isn't really the case any more due to the weekend cap increase, unless you intend not to travel in the weekend between buying passes.  So I've changed it to simply reflect a 28 day pass.

As always, the cheapest option is to travel using Early Bird.  Catch is you need to arrive at your destination (by train only... you can't do it on tram or bus) by 7:14:59AM each morning.  If you can do that, you will save considerable cash.

Second Cheapest Option is myki pass, and is the simplest most straight forward option.

From there with my other scenarios, it just gets more and more expensive.  So much so that travelling on myki money for anything other than a casual basis can get quite expensive especially if you also travel at the weekend.

I'm not going to go into if the fare rises are a good or bad idea or not.  I'm certain that Victorians will make their opinions on this well known in November, 2014.

Any corrections of the spreadsheet, let me know :)


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