>arthur@gateway.dircsa.org.au (Arthur Marsh) wrote:
>>Maurie Daly (mauried@commslab.gov.au) wrote:
>>: The running costs of just about all country passenger rail services in this
>>: country are extremely high, on average about 33c per net passenger km,whilst
>>: the revenue earned from the service ranges from about 6 c to 16 c per net
>>: passenger km.
>>Hey, I have a ticket that cost me close to 25 cents per net passenger km.
>That means that your ticket is below average. Generally speaking, the
>longer the journey, the lower the price per NPK.
>David Johnson
>trainman@ozemail.com.au
>trainman@railpage.org.au
>trainman@cia.com.au
>http://www.ozemail.com.au/~trainman/
>[{BBS address:trainman@tryst.com.au}]
What tends to distort the costs of running passenger trains versus other forms
of transport is the very high numbers of concessional types of fares which
Rail is forced to accomodate.
Whilst I dont have any problem with people getting concessional fares,its only
fair if all forms of transport are forced to provide the same
concessions,which certainly in the case of the airline industry they dont.
It might be a more fair scheme if there were no concession fares at all,and
people who ordinarily would have gained a concession could get a rebate from
Social Security after having paid the fare.
At least this way,the true cost of running passenger services could be
transparantly seen and costed.
AS a matter of interest,if a private operator wins the bids to run AN
passenger trains,will they be obliged to offer the same range of concession
fares as AN itself offers?
Interesting times ahead.
cheers
Maurie Daly
--------------------------------------------------
Maurie Daly
Department of Communications Lab.
Canberra
Australia
mauried@commslab.gov.au
ph 6 2791331
--------------------------------------------------