Editorial: Let's take the one ticket trip

Opinion

Public transport in a place as dispersed as Auckland needs to be as inviting as it can be. A single integrated ticket is one of the minimum requirements. People will not be enticed to make a journey that might involve two, possibly three, connections if they have to buy a separate ticket at each stage. A single ticket gives them the cost of the journey at the outset and allows them to transfer, from bus to ferry to train as the case may be, with less delay and no more fiddling with coins. Integrated ticketing is common in other places; it is a disgrace that Auckland has waited so long.

The city's various modes of public transport are owned or operated by different private companies who compete to a degree but who all stand to gain from any investment that makes public transport more attractive. In most other industries companies are quick - too quick for the comfort of competition regulators - to collude on activities of mutual advantage. What is wrong with passenger transport? Possibly life is too comfortable in a highly subsidised business where the service is largely specified by a public body and private operators simply clip the ticket.

Three years ago the Auckland Regional Council tried to set up an integrated ticket scheme but it was opposed by bus operators, who agreed to set up a consortium and come up with their own proposal. A few months ago the consortium of four companies, led by Stagecoach, came up with a smart card scheme. But they wanted public money to meet the cost of installing it. The recently established Auckland Regional Transport Authority was unimpressed with the proposal, not only on account of its $3 million price tag, and now has decided to take charge of integrated ticketing itself.

There is a certain logic in a uniform system of fares and ticketing to be run by the body responsible for overseeing the city's transport services, but dangers too. The regional transport authority was the creation of politicians, local and national, frustrated by decisions made by people in the market and convinced that they can run things better. One intervention leads to another. Having committed millions of dollars to upgrading railways and "busways", they are reluctant now to leave the services and patronage to find their economic levels. They want to own the trains as well as the tracks and they did not welcome the bus consortium's smart card scheme in part because it would have allowed operators to keep their own fares.

Integrated ticketing need not be a Trojan horse for the return of central control. It cannot be hard to organise a system that reimburses all operators at the fares they normally charge for their part of the journey. If the transport authority uses integrated ticketing as an excuse to take control of fares it will reduce competition and probably the operators' profitability. The only consequence would be greater costs to the region's ratepayers and national taxpayers who together subsidise Auckland public transport with $58 million annually.

It would be quite reasonable for the authority to make integrated ticketing a condition of all contracts it lets to public transport operators, whether of buses, trains or ferries. All should pick up passengers on tickets issued by competitors if the public is to receive the service it needs. Plenty of other cities operate integrated ticketing to the satisfaction of different operators and it must be possible here. It is time for the authority to take control but to do it with care - the costs and fares charged by competitive operators reflect commuters' actual behaviour. Let's accept fares as they are for integrated ticketing and at long last just get it done.