50-cent fares: Who wins big in plan for cheap public transport tickets

Some commuters could save hundreds of dollars a month, and traffic on the M1 may ease as people swap their cars for seats on the train – but transport planners said there was a lot about south-east Queensland’s system that Labor’s “radical” cost-of-living measure would not fix.

Gold Coast residents will be the big winners from the state government’s weekend announcement that public transport fares would drop to 50¢ for six months, but many workers on the booming fringes of Brisbane would not see any benefit, experts warned.

The policy announced on the weekend would slash fares for bus, train and ferry trips to 50 cents.Credit: Robert Shakespeare

Professor Matthew Burke, the deputy director of Griffith University’s Cities Research Institute, said his students were excited to hear Queensland would follow in the footsteps of cities around the world – such as Luxembourg, Paris and Shanghai – with very low or free public transport fares.

“It is no accident this is being trialled around the election, but I think it will play out very well,” Burke said of the $150 million six-month trial, set to begin in August.

He said most of the people to benefit were in Brisbane’s inner-ring commuter belt – already frequent users of public transport – while commuters coming from the southern Gold Coast to Brisbane, now paying more than $20 for a one-way fare, would see the biggest savings.

“Far fewer commuters come from the Sunshine Coast. But a big, big group come up from the Gold Coast. They are big winners in this move,” Burke said.

Queensland’s public transport quick facts

• One in six passengers using public transport in SEQ are students.
• Queensland Transport received $294.6 million in fares in 2022-23.
• One of the best patronised public transport links is a bus corridor in Townsville to the hospital.

“I think it will have an impact – on the margins – on congestion on the M1. We could see it getting some people out of their cars and into trains.”

In the short-term, he said, it would be likely to increase the percentage of trips made on public transport from 10 per cent to 15 per cent.

But Burke warned that for commuters on already congested routes, many of which identified by south-east Queensland mayors last week, the problems would remain or get worse.

Premier Steven Miles said on Sunday that if that happened, the government would respond.

“Our teams in transport and main roads, every day, analyse transport usage,” he said. “They will, of course, monitor very closely the impact of these 50¢ fares and make sure that we have services there for people.”

Transport planner David Hayward – whose research has found that most Brisbane traffic is not work-related – said 50¢ fares would be good for city commuters, but less helpful for people accessing suburban shops, schools and local jobs.

“I think there will be some people in outer suburban areas who will shift to public transport, because of the cost-of-living relief it provides,” said Hayward, who serves on the national executive of Engineers Australia’s Transport Australia Society.

“The challenge is that more than 80 per cent of people who live in those areas don’t work in the inner-city, so they probably are less likely to use public transport even if the fares are so cheap.

“It doesn’t really benefit those people trying to get to work because public transport doesn’t get to them to their destination as easily.”

Hayward said south-east Queensland’s system of rail, bus and ferry lines was largely a fixed network, predominantly focused on inner-city travel with high-frequency services.

“The benefits will be for people who already live close to public transport services and there will be limited benefits for those who aren’t, which is where the challenges lie.”

He said the policy was not strictly a public transport policy.

“It seems it is more of a cost-of-living measure – which is good,” he said. “But ultimately we do need more public transport services across Greater Brisbane to meet the growth that is occurring.”