And how useful are those to the average traveller?  There is no sense in restricting benefits to certain groups.
*Concession fares should be abolished (increase welfare spending)
*Minor fares should be free in metro areas, about half price for regional
*Fares should be set to enable cost recovery, with a distance based pricing structure

Eliminating concession fares and moving the benefit to welfare is the fairest way of doing things, that does not discriminate against those with no PT access.

The complete lack of coverage of opex (only 25-30%) and capex (nothing) from PT revenue is why it is ignored by government.

Road revenue covers both opex and capex of new roads, hence it is not a money pit, and this is why government is more willing to invest.

At the risk of sounding a little bit "socialist", V/Line is necessarily subsidized because if it didn't exist, then the economic burden on the state would be far higher than it is now.  You would find that V/Line's subsidy is very much worth it.  The benefits outweigh the (relatively minor) taxpayer burden.

The fact that it is essentially a "subsidized public service" at present does tend to mean that investment in V/Line is sketchy because successive governments have failed to see the wider value that it is to this state.  I suspect that customer service and employee pride in the organization (along with patronage) would also be far better than now if its benefits were more widely recognized.  Don't get me wrong - many of V/Line's employees are doing their absolute best with a rundown fleet and deaf governments, and yet there are some who take the attitude that (and I quote an actual conductor - not Bendigo line btw): "if you don't like what we (V/Line) are doing then you shouldn't catch the train".  And that's a lose-lose scenario.

And how useful are those to the average traveller? There is no sense in restricting benefits to certain groups.
*Concession fares should be abolished (increase welfare spending)
*Minor fares should be free in metro areas, about half price for regional
*Fares should be set to enable cost recovery, with a distance based pricing structure

Eliminating concession fares and moving the benefit to welfare is the fairest way of doing things, that does not discriminate against those with no PT access.

I think it might it be better just to transfer the concession responsibilities to the federal government, since not everyone is eligible for welfare payments.

EDIT: I suppose you could change the eligibility requirements...

"*Fares should be set to enable cost recovery, with a distance based pricing structure"


I absolutely concur. And they should do EXACTLY the same thing for roads. Charge each user for EVERY KM used.


The government in Vic saw fit to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on the MYKI system to ensure that they could work out exactly where and when each traveller was going. Maybe in the future they will use this technology to charge each user for each specific trip.


So how about a KaRKI system for roads? You would swipe on when you left your driveway and swipe off when you arrived at your destination. If you failed to swipe off you would be charged the maximum fare as if you had driven to the top of Cape York!

The trams and buses to Deakin and Latrobe have subsidised fares as well. Some bus lines have a lower rate of cost recovery than rail.

Agreed...moreover I no longer engage in discussion with [color=#333333][size=3][font='Open Sans', Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]ZH836301[/font][/size][/color] due to the bile as can be seen in many of that contributors previous posts.