Melbourne's Multi-Modal Based
Ticketing Systems: 1969 to present
Page last modified/checked: Friday, 20 May, 2005
From the mid 1970's until present, successive Victorian Governments have trialled, tampered with, or just got horribly wrong, the process or outcome of the requirement of a customer to hold a valid ticket before using Melbourne's train, tram or bus services. They are still trying to sell the idea today. Not surprisingly from all these efforts has emerged a colourful and seemingly endless variety of tickets which many of us have probably handled at some point. The concept of multi-modal travel was hammered out at an early stage and Melbourne was a clear leader in developing specific tickets/systems that incorporated Government and private services. The purpose of this website is to review those hundreds of tickets and ideas that came and went from 1969 until present. The emphasis is firstly on the multi-modal tickets; something taken for granted in Melbourne today, but which can be defined even if vaguely, as having emerged in 1969. In later additions to this site we hope to explain the individual fare systems that followed from 1981 and this should lead to the current automated system and our existing "unofficial Metcard story".
In terms of the historic development of Melbourne's public transport tickets, a huge amount of change and upheaval occurred over a relatively short period, starting around 1980. The resultant influx of paper and card tickets, most of a generic nature, was discouraging to many collectors who also saw their chances of obtaining a complete set of "anything" after this time as highly unlikely. For these and other reasons, many of the tickets you will see here are now scarce items. The same is also true of original public and staff information releases that are crucial in helping to explain and understand how and why events took the course they did. The key to constructing this website lies with an extensive collection of tickets and material that was obtained, collated and stored from 1980 onwards. It would be impossible to present information this detailed today without reference to this long-held material. I hope that what is shown here will enlighten you as to any similar tickets that you might have in your own collection. At the very least it may be an encouragement to make greater observation of what we have today.
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