Skip to main content

New South Wales scraps paper tickets

New South Wales, Australia will move towards a modern integrated electronic ticketing system on public transport on 1 August, when the last of the old paper tickets will no longer be sold or accepted. Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Andrew Constance said that customers have embraced Opal, with two million customers taking 13 million journeys a week. “Opal is being used for 95 per cent of all public transport trips,” Constance said. “Given the enormous success, it’s now time to stop running t
July 5, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
New South Wales, Australia will move towards a modern integrated electronic ticketing system on public transport on 1 August, when the last of the old paper tickets will no longer be sold or accepted.

Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Andrew Constance said that customers have embraced Opal, with two million customers taking 13 million journeys a week. “Opal is being used for 95 per cent of all public transport trips,” Constance said.

“Given the enormous success, it’s now time to stop running two ticketing systems and move to one convenient system that enables future innovation.

“With the single electronic system we can move to the next stage in ticketing, with a customer trial in 2017 for tapping on with credit and debit cards.”

Since the roll-out of Opal began in December 2012 customers have taken 800 million trips and more than 7.5 million cards have been issued, including one million Gold Senior/Pensioner cards, 700,000 Child/Youth cards, and 350,000 School Opal cards.

A comprehensive information campaign will remind the remaining customers who don’t have Opal that it’s time to make the switch.

Related Content

  • A meeting of minds
    February 27, 2012
    My campaign starts here: I think it's time that we should stigmatise those that are single.
  • IEEE survey reveals driverless cars are the future
    July 15, 2014
    IEEE has released the findings of a survey that revealed expert opinions about the future of driverless cars, from challenges to mass adoption, essential autonomous technologies, features in the car of the future, and geographic adoption. More than 200 researchers, academicians, practitioners, university students, society members and government agencies in the field of autonomous vehicles, participated in the survey. When survey respondents were asked to assign a ranking to six possible roadblocks to th
  • Go-Ahead partners with CitySwift platform
    October 30, 2024
    Platform is designed to maximise network reliability and punctuality
  • ITS Australia announces 2013 awards winners
    November 29, 2013
    From young professionals to lifetime achievers, the ITS Australia awards ceremony recognised leading industry contributors at the end of a busy 2013 event calendar. Winners were announced before more than 110 industry leaders in Melbourne last week and the Awards program was well supported with nominations from a wide cross section of industry sectors. Winners included Keith Aldridge who was posthumously awarded the Max Lay lifetime achievement award for his creative vision, passion and dedication to