Tasmania might keep public transport free statewide

Transport Minister Kerry Vincent has now confirmed the government is in the process of working out whether it can afford to keep public transport free indefinitely. "The numbers have been fantastic with the growth in various areas," he said. "What we'd need to do is just weigh up the cost of that, how we operate Metro and our general access buses all around the state. "And understand the impact that that has of moving more people off our roads and onto public transport." New ticketing system project on pause The state government has a contract with Cubic to develop a new electronic ticketing system for public transport. Building Tasmania said the contract was worth $27.7 million, with $11.9 million already paid to date. Last year's annual report said the common ticketing system would end up costing $65 million, but the government later said that figure was incorrect and down to human error. Mr Vincent today said the ticketing system was on pause while the government considered all its options. He was unable to say whether there were consequences for pulling out of the contract. "We have a contract in place, and we've been working through various bits of information that they have available as part of the package to us, and I haven't all those details at that time," he said. The minister said there were no targets in place when working out whether free public transport would pay off, but he did want to see an increase in numbers. "Tasmania's never really taken public transport on board like most major metropolitan areas," he said. "So we need to keep increasing the numbers and see the benefits that are flowing to the community and measure that against what we're up against with building more roads, replacing roads. "So it's a balancing act but we're working through that on a monthly basis." Even if public transport remains free, the government might look at having a passenger counting system to help it understand demand.