Conclusion

Page last modified/checked: Sunday, 10th August, 2008

As far as can generally be traced, the writing was on the wall for the neighbourhoods at least 12 months before their demise. However, within the Ministry of Transport, the desire to simplify, or better, replace the Neighbourhood fare structure can be traced back to 1987.

Even so, as we have seen, alterations and additions continued within the range until quite late. The simplified range of monthly tickets are a good example: but why could these have not been a feature from the inception?

There are two main reasons why it was desirable to replace the neighbourhood fare structure as follows:

1. It did not properly cater to the needs of the travelling public:

The system was overly complicated by virtue of ten different charging areas. Of these, only the Inner neighbourhood had a full range of tickets. In contrast, the remaining nine neighbourhoods had only a limited choice with the majority being geared towards travel over neighbourhood boundaries, not within them. It would have taken an additional thirty-six(!) basic ticket types to provide equal choice for patrons system wide.

2. The neighbourhood ticketing system was not compatable with major reform desired by the State Government for the Metropolitan ticketing system, among other issues.

In particular, future mechanisation and the resultant reduction in ticket issuing staff were beyond the practicle reach should the neighbourhoods remain. This was also true should the future off-system sale of tickets commence. With regard to these ideas, the draft strategy of the Victorian Governments 1988 "Metplan" document provides a revealing insight into future directions metropolitan public transport ticketing might take.

Metplan has its own section in the next chapter of this website where we detail the return to a zonal based fare system, and see what features of the neighbourhood system would be carried over.....

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