Thursday, January 20, 2011

TransLink Spin Alert

TransLink Spin
In the mX newspaper (if you can call it that) on 20/01/11, TransLink ran a new advertisement about the slightly delayed fare increases (Faremaggedon II), now starting on Saturday 22nd January. TransLink and it's operators should be commended on restoring public transport quickly after the floods, and providing free public transport for a week to help with the flood recovery. However, the wording of this advertisement is rather inappropriate, with the quote "A 15 per cent fare increase to help us restore and continue to build our public transport network".

This quote makes it appear that TransLink's spin merchants are trying to use the flood recovery as an excuse for the fare increase. Please, TransLink, stop insulting the intelligence of commuters. We all know that the 15% fare rise was planned over a year ago. We also know that with the exception of Brisbane City Council's ferry services, virtually all public transport is already back to normal.

The advert also has a few other prize quotes. "Encouraging use of go cards with the removal of daily, weekly, and monthly paper tickets", should be "Discouraging the frequent use of public transport with a limited fare structure". Another quote is "Making off peak travel 15 per cent cheaper". 15 per cent cheaper than what exactly? This is a rather misleading statement!

Rather concerning, is the omission in this advert of the 305,000 extra seats per week promised by TransLink. Lets hope that these seats are not flotsam in Moreton Bay!

Update 27/01/11

A new advertisement appeared in mX newspaper on 27/01/11 entitled "TransLink ticketing changes". Thankfully this advert is considerably better worded, and is not as misleading as the previous advert mentioned above. However, there is no mention of peak single go card fares rising 15%, frequent travel costing even more, capped fares for seniors, or the 305,000 extra seats per week.

4 comments:

  1. Agreed! I thought the exact same thing when I heard the radio ads... "Hang on a second, those fare increases were planned well before the floods happened!".

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  2. We might have more seats at Bribie Island but they are vacant. Our rush hour bus service on the island has seen a 50% drop in patronage since the timetable was changed over a year ago. With the new timetable if you live at Banksia Beach it takes over two and a half hours to get home from Brisbane (that's only 70km). The new "Park and Ride" has only three cars in it most every day, because we all drive to the station!!
    All this and a fair increase of almost 50% in the past year or so...
    If the people who run Translink ran any other company it would have been out of business years ago.

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  3. what were translink peak travel times before 22 january 2011.. does anyone no if they were changed to?

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  4. The TransLink peak travel times are the same. 2:00am to 9:00am and 03:30pm to 07:00pm Monday to Friday.

    Yes, it's rather odd that TransLink think that it's peak hour at 2am when no services are running!

    ReplyDelete

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