Adelaide Fares Strategy and Ticketing Roadmap

Background

NineSquared was engaged by the South Australian Government to help develop a fares strategy and ticketing roadmap for the Adelaide Metro public transport system.

The South Australian Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure sets fares and manages the ticketing system for the Adelaide public transport system known as Adelaide Metro. Adelaide Metro provides bus, train and tram services. Fares and discounts are automatically calculated through a card-based automated fare collection system. The system was based on a flat fare structure in which fares did not vary by distance but provided various discounts based on passenger class, time of travel and whether periodical passes were pre-purchased.

The Department wanted to review its fare settings and, at the same time, consider its future ticketing requirements at the end of the existing ticketing contract. This included considering the transition from a card-based ticketing system to an account based system and the use of mobile / smartphone ticketing.

NineSquared with its ticketing expert partner, Cormeum, were engaged to deliver both the fare strategy and ticketing roadmap for the Department.

Our Role

NineSquared utilised our existing fares database as well as ticketing data provided by the Department to develop an in-depth picture of the current state of the Adelaide Metro fare structure and how it affected patronage on the network. The analysis included consideration of the impact of fare changes over time, a comparative analysis, benchmarking the Adelaide system compared to capital cities in Australia and how it compared to flat fare systems across the world.

The analysis then developed a menu of potential fare options for the consideration of the Department along with an analysis of the customer, financial and strategic impacts of each potential change to the current fare system. Financial impacts were estimated utilising a bespoke fares model developed by NineSquared specifically to deal with the data that was available and the need to consider a number of potential changes in combination with each other.

Once the review of fares was completed, the development of the ticketing roadmap was started. After documenting the strategic context and the current state of the existing ticketing system as well as estimating the cost of the existing system and the supplier landscape, a set of potential contractual, functionality enhancements and customer benefits were documented. Timing and the relationship between these enhancements were then detailed in a road map which could be used to communicate future investment strategies as well as allow for an understanding of the impact of future decisions on contractual relationships and Adelaide Metro’s customers.

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