Adding an hour to the neighbourhoods

A state election was held on March 2nd 1985, the first since the inception of the neighbourhood fare system. The Government lost ground in metropolitan seats and it is widely accepted that part of this was a backlash from disgruntled public transport users. The State Government had to acknowledge that transport patrons were not as accepting of the neighbourhood fare system as had been hoped. In an effort to regain some of this lost confidence it was decided to increase the time availability of most 2 hour neighbourhood ticket types. This did not involve any changes to the tickets themselves, staff simply punched the time box one further hour ahead. This time extension was not granted to travel within or to the inner neighbourhood, nor to the anywhere neighbourhood ticket. It was felt the greater availability of transport within the inner neighbourhood did not warrant its extension to this area. Perhaps also the State Government had felt a stronger message from constituents in Melbourne's middle and outer metropolitan electorates?

We have not been able to trace exactly when this time extension occurred but it appears to have been during early/mid July 1985. The M.T.A. used the late actor Frank Thring to promote this change through TV and the print media. A series of individual neighbourhood leaflets were also provided. There is also evidence of a leaflet outlining the changes as a whole. For the duration of the neighbourhood fare system, all ticket and fare publicity had to separately describe 2 and 3 hour tickets.