4 Ways to Get Smart about Perth Public Transport

It has been quite a while since I used public transport but the other day, when we went to the Good Food and Wine Show, I was quite surprised how much public transport can cost if you don't know what you are doing. When I worked it out, it was probably cheaper to bring the car into the city and pay for parking.

Transperth Fares Effective 1 July 2013

	STANDARD			CONCESSION
	Cash	SmartRider - cost per journey		Cash	SmartRider - cost per journey
		15% discount	25% discount		15% discount	25% discount
2 Sections	$2.00	$1.70	$1.50	$0.80	$0.68	$0.60
1 Zone	$2.80	$2.38	$2.10	$1.10	$0.94	$0.83
2 Zones	$4.20	$3.57	$3.15	$1.70	$1.45	$1.28
3 Zones	$5.10	$4.34	$3.83	$2.00	$1.70	$1.50
4 Zones	$6.10	$5.19	$4.58	$2.40	$2.04	$1.80
5 Zones	$7.50	$6.38	$5.63	$3.00	$2.55	$2.25
6 Zones	$8.50	$7.23	$6.38	$3.40	$2.89	$2.55
7 Zones	$9.90	$8.42	$7.43	$4.00	$3.40	$3.00
8 Zones	$10.70	$9.10	$8.03	$4.30	$3.66	$3.23
9 Zones	$11.60	$9.86	$8.70	$4.60	$3.91	$3.45
DayRider	$11.60			$4.60	$3.45	$3.45
FamilyRider	$11.60
Student					50 cents - no discount
All fares GST inclusive. Fares calculated are rounded to the nearest whole cent based on normal rounding convention

1. SmartRider discounts If two people travel to the City from Murdoch Station, a round trip will cost as much as $16.80 or as low as $12.60 depending on whether you get a discount or not. If you have a SmartRider card, but you load credit in manually, you get 15% off until all your credit runs out. If you have a SmartRider and the last time you loaded credit in was automatically through autoload, you get 25% off all your trips until you next load credit.

So, if you have SmartRider and you nominate to autoload, here's some tips to keep your 25% discount

• Don't load credit into your card manually unless you don't have enough funds in your bank/credit card 
• If you do load manually, load the minimum amount as you will only get 15% until you get down to your next autoload. 
• If credit falls below the threshhold, don't panic. Your SmartRider will only autoload once all your credit is used up without penalty as long as you have sufficient money in your nominated credit card or bank account for the autoload to go through
• If you are a rewards points earner, why not direct debit from your Visa/Mastercard credit card rather than from your bank account? 
• Some banks charge dishonour fees around $25 so make sure your bank account has enough money for your SmartRider autoloads. It could be a very expensive autoload!

2. "Family" Rider Remember that  you may be able to purchase a FamilyRider which will only cost $11.60 for all day travel. From the Transperth website, a FamilyRider: 

Allows unlimited system-wide travel for a group of up to seven people (two of whom can be standard fare passengers) on

• weekends and public holidays 

• after 6.00pm Monday to Thursday 

• after 3.00pm on Fridays  

• after 9.00am on weekdays during school holidays. Transperth follows the gazetted school dates from the Department of Education. View the gazetted school dates here. 

• after 8.30am in zones 5 to 9 during school holidays.

FamilyRider is only available as a cash ticket on the day of travel.

3. Free Public Transport Many events such as Wildcats games, AFL games and some concerts include free Transperth travel before and after the event so look out for those.

4. Concession card holder The best thing offered by Transperth are the concession card holder discounts. If you are a student or a seniors card holder, make sure you get a SmartRider with concession card rates! It may only cost you 50c to travel on Perth public transport if you are a student or even free if you are senior card holder.

Related

• Transperth on Google and Mobile