Melbourne’s city-to-airport bus fares officially the most expensive in Australia

ITS airport carparking has already been exposed as Australia’s biggest rip-off, and to make matters worse they’ve just jacked up the price on bus travel.

Melbourne Airport generics

MELBOURNE has just taken the one thing people loathe about travelling there and made it so much worse.

The operator of the city’s SkyBus service has just ramped up its fare price for trips between Tullamarine airport and the CBD, confirming Melbourne as the most expensive city in Australia to get to the airport and back.

And the news comes on the same day Melbourne was separately found to be the biggest rip-off for airport car parking in the country.

Fares for SkyBus, which shuttles passengers in both directions between the city and airport, have gone up by a dollar as of today.

This has bumped a one-way ticket to $19 and a return ticket to $38.

Unlike Sydney and Brisbane, Melbourne has no airport train link despite loud calls for one, leaving SkyBus the only mass transport option available to visitors and locals travelling to the airport.

And although Sydneysiders have long complained about paying through the nose to use the city’s privately operated airport train service, the Melbourne SkyBus’s newly prices are now officially higher — and still subject to the whims of traffic conditions.

In Sydney, an adult travelling one way from Town Hall station to the international or domestic airport terminals pays $16.78 — which includes the $13.40 station access fee and $3.38 peak-hour fare ($2.36 during off-peak hours).

Brisbane’s Airtrain link from the airport to Central station costs $17.50 for a one-way adult ticket.

Melbourne’s state Labor government has dropped plans by the Coalition government in 2014 to build a dedicated rail link between Southern Cross station and Tullamarine airport by 2026.

State opposition transport spokesman David Hodgett said Melbourne came up short when comparing airport travel options in Sydney and Brisbane.

“Unlike SkyBus, they don’t get stuck in CityLink or Tullamarine Freeway congestion that can result in a peak-hour trip from the airport taking more than 50 minutes,” he told Fairfax.

And if you happen to be driving to Melbourne airport, here’s more bad news for you.

The SkyBus fare hike come as a new Australian Competition and Consumer Affairs report found Tullamarine airport was gouging customers on car parking services more than any other airport in the country.

The report found of all Australian airports, Tullamarine earned the highest margin on parking at a whopping 73.2 cents in the dollar — an increase of 20 per cent on the previous year.

The ACCC said the increase was probably due to people parking there for longer durations.