Reddit: Opal and discontiguous train journeys →

The idea is to increase the number of journeys on your Opal card as close to the max as possible in a short time. This can save a lot of money if you have a longer commute, want to use a lot of ferries, etc.

  • Take a train to Ersko or Mac’town, tap off as normal
  • Walk to the other station, tap on
  • Walk back, tap off
  • Repeat until you have enough journeys!
  • My return journeys took about 10 minutes each as you can see in my history, but this could be a lot faster with a bicycle.

Notes:

  • You can’t do this in the City, as transfers between city stations don’t count as a new journey
  • You can’t ride the train when tapped off, hence why you must walk between stations (which is a lot faster in this case anyway) . If you wanted to do something similar actually riding the trains, it would take two cards.
  • You have to stop once the daily cap of $15 is reached, which means you can only get 7 journeys this way in a single go.
  • The above stations are picked since they are close to each other and have Opal readers (without barriers) near the footpath.

It might be a good business opportunity for a student or bicycle courier – collect people’s Opal cards on Monday, rack up the journeys and return the cards for a small fee. You could tap on multiple cards at once I suppose. I’m not sure how many times you could do this before the station staff might notice and start asking questions šŸ™‚

(viaĀ SilverStar9192 on Reddit)

SMH: Transport Minister backs commuters who beat the Opal man →

The Transport Minister has backed commuters who manipulate their travel to get the best deal out of their Opal card, potentially saving them, and costing the government, hundreds of dollars a year.

Under theĀ Opal fare structure, travel is free after the card-holder has made eight trips in a week.

This has created an incentive for people to take cheap – and potentially useless – trips early in the week to make significant savings later on.

“I want people to beat the system,” Gladys BerejiklianĀ said. “I want people to find the savings because they are there to be had,” she said.

I thought this was already pretty obvious fromĀ the Fares & benefits page

By understanding Opalā€™s fare structure, and what it means for your journey, you can work out ways to save even more.