Free bus travel in Darwin

[Darwin bus lover]

Due to on going issue with ticketing, all urban services in Darwin will be free until 31 December 2022. Fares will allegedly return from January 1.

A large number of buses have been operating for months without DCU’s resulting in uncertainty as to wether fares are required or not. This has also caused issues for “tap & ride,” card users who occasionally did pay a fare only for those paying cash to be given free travel due to a printer issue or machine error.

[Darwin bus lover]

Alice Springs will also be included in this.

[Merc1107]

Fares will allegedly return from January 1.

I can't believe for a moment they'll have their act together by then, barring some miracle!

[Fleet Lists]

Is it that bad?

[Merc1107]

Over half the fleet have lost their ticketing equipment during the last 12 months - the current 'tablets' (glorified Point of Sale units) are all close to a decade old, and many have failed recently. A number of replacements were trialled but nothing came of it. Up until now, a passenger boarding a bus with a DCU was expected to pay, whereas a bus without one you obviously cannot - which is obviously frustrating as fewer and fewer buses were getting around with a DCU, and many passengers liked to buy "Weekly" top-ups for their cards.

What I would love to know is whether the software those tablets run was unique to Darwin, or whether it is actually a widely-used. The NT Bus Tracker seems to be based on TIMS.

[Merc1107]

A recent post on the NT DIPL Facebook Page indicates the upgrades have taken place, and fares will resume on 1st January 2023 as planned. No changes have been made to payment - cash fares or use a tap & ride card onboard the bus, with EFTPOS facilities available at the interchange when the manned kiosks are open. While this may seem like a quaint way to run things in 2022, it works quite well, particularly given the fares are flat, and are kept to the nearest dollar. It also recognises the circumstances applicable to the NT, that a great deal of people prefer to use cash.

Tap & ride cards can be topped up in increments of ten trips or one week for the same price, with ten trip cards saving passengers 33% over a cash fare. Drivers usually keep a cache of cards with them to sell to passengers who'd like to buy one, with many passengers carrying two cards, as a card initially sold as a "Weekly" cannot be topped up as "Ten Trips", and vice-versa.

There must be some more work to do, as the NT Bus Tracker is not showing any live bus movements or expected departures from stops, the (original) NT Bus Tracker app and a newer version superseding it show no live or scheduled departures, and AnyTrip only shows scheduled times. As all of these were still working to some extent until recently (i.e. with the handful of buses that still had DCUs), I suspect the new DCUs have either not been activated and/or substantial upgrades were undertaken on the backend, meaning none of the apps or web apps are pointing in the right place.