NSW Opal cards to face 2.4% hike from July

Opal will be increasing fares from July. Commuters in New South Wales will face a 2.4 percent increase in their Opal fares, which Transport Minister Andrew Constance said will be in line with inflation.

The increase amounts to about 50 cents a week from July 3. Commuters will pay $61.60 a week maximum for travel, and the daily caps will increase by 40 cents, the special Sunday cap by 10 cents. Gold Opal cardholders for seniors and pensioners won’t be affected; their fares remain capped at $2.50 per day.

The fare hike will apply to Opal card users in Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle and surrounding areas. It comes after the NSW government ends promise not to increase set fares for users.

Constance justified removing the freeze and increasing the fake, saying the state needs to invest in more and better services. “There is a cost attached, and in the past, we’ve seen revenue go down when patronage has gone up,” he said.

Last year, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) proposed fare increase across all rail, bus, ferry and light rails in Sydney over the next three years. It suggested a hike of 4.2 percent per year from July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2019.

But the government sees the 4.2 percent hike as “too heavy,” and therefore it slashed the suggested amount to just 2.4 percent. “We just believe that 4.2 percent is too heavy a burden for commuting families,” Constance said on Wednesday. “We’re facing a $9 billion economic loss across the state per annum so we want to get people using the transport network. We want to put downward pressure on the cost of living.”

Constance said the hike keeps in line with the inflation. However, he did not say if the fares would increase by more than the inflation rate next year.

Read: IPART proposes Opal card fare hike: No more free trips after 8 journeys