Would you walk 6km for $45? Is the ‘Opal hack’ really worth it?

SCORES of people are using an opal ‘hack’ to save on their weekly commuting costs. The catch? They have to walk for 90 minutes on a Monday morning.

Would you walk 6km on a Monday morning to get a maximum of $45 per week off your travel costs?

Well, scores of Sydneysiders are, taking advantage of an ‘Opal hack’ by doing shuttle trips between card readers.

The thrifty travellers are taking advantage of Opal’s pricing structure, which rewards customers who make eight journeys in a week with free fares for the rest of that week. The maximum a user can spend on the Opal card in a week is $60.

The idea is to find two stations close enough to each other to walk between, tapping on and off at either end during off-peak hours so the eight journeys are completed on the first day, therefore activating the $15 daily cap (see factbox below).

Walking or running the 300m between these two stations is worth it to some Oapl users.

The 450m between these two inner west stations is an alternative.

The catch? You need to either wait an hour between shuttle runs or do it 20 times.

A thread started on Reddit after Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian encouraged people to “beat the system” last September has seen users attempt a variety of techniques.

They found the best one was the short, minimum-cost ($2.10 for adults, $1.10 for concessions) off-peak journey between the light rail stops at Pyrmont Bay and The Star casino, less than 300m apart.

How the Opal works

• Trip: Between a tap on and tap off.
  
• Transfer - There has been less an hour between the last tap off and the next tap on.
• Journey - A number of trips and transfers which end an hour after the last tap off. A traveller must wait 60 minutes from the last tap off in order to begin a new one or complete four more trips.
• Daily cap - Spend $15 a day and the rest of the day is free.
• Weekly Travel Reward - After eight journeys in a week, the rest of the week’s is free.
• Total cap - An Opal user can’t spend over $60 in a week across all transport forms, excluding airport services

The other popular alternative is Erskineville to Macdonaldtown train station - a 450m walk.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as it first seems.

Just tapping on and off at each end doesn’t work - the card would register this as a transfer, as a Transport for NSW spokeswoman explained:

“If a customer taps on at The Star and then taps off at Pyrmont Bay light rail, they will not be able to tap on at either Pyrmont Bay or The Star to start a new journey, it would be a ‘transfer’ if it occurs within 60 minutes,” she said.

Is the Opal car hack worth it?

“To reach a new paid journey a customer would need to make three more trips between the stops to then progress into a new paid journey, that is tap on and tap off 5 times all up.”

So, Opal hackers must walk between destinations 20 times on a Monday morning to get the rest of the week’s transport for free, a 6km slog that would take the average person about an hour and half to walk.

Redditor kwetiaw did just that, showing an account statement showing the twenty legs of his journey on a Monday morning in December.

The Opal card bill of Reddit user kwetiaw shows the ‘hack in action.

The bill shows the first tap on at 5.56am with another 19 trips, spaced every two or three minutes, between Pyrmont Bay and The Star, concluding just under an hour later at 6:53am.

“Went to work (Town hall to Macquarie Park) cost $0 as I have hit the required journey for free travel,” kwetiaw wrote.

“I know it may seem (an) easy task to do, but it almost got to me, running in the rain back and forth at 6am in the morning. But I tried to look at things on the good side which is saving money ($17/week) and getting fit!”

It all begs the question: has anyone really ‘beaten’ the Opal system?