What happens when you touch on inside the Free Tram Zone?

So, this is inspired by something pretty silly.

A friend of mine was talking about people on Twitter complaining about the various idiosyncrasies of Melbourne’s public transport fare system. Among these complaints were that, for reasons relating to limitations of technology, you would be charged a full fare if you touched on and off while taking a trip entirely within Melbourne’s Free Tram Zone.

The Free Tram Zone is, well, entirely what it sounds like. A zone in Melbourne’s CBD in which tram travel is free. If you’re travelling entirely within the Free Tram Zone, you don’t need to touch on or off.

But I thought, surely it wouldn’t charge you a full fare if you touched on. After all, all the announcements I’d heard, as a long time Melbourne resident, never said “don’t touch on”, they said “you don’t have to touch on”.

And since I was in the CBD, I decided to test my theory.

Now, I use a Myki pass, meaning that my travel is prepaid for. So in order to actually see if it would take money off my Myki, I had to buy a new Myki, which cost $3, and I topped it up with $3. (A concession fare is $2.65.) This cost me a total of $6.

My newly purchased Myki.

I decided that I would test this by taking the 30 tram¹ one stop, from Melbourne Central to Russell Street.

As you can see, the stop I was boarding at was in the Free Tram Zone.

So I got on the tram and touched on.

As I write this, I’m realising I could have topped up my Myki with the minimum possible amount ($1), since it can go into negatives. Oh well.

As I was on the tram, I realised my half-remembered memory about the advisory being “you don’t have to touch on” was incorrect. I might have — in fact, I probably did — mix it up with the advice that you don’t have to touch off if you’re just travelling in Zone 1, because the maximum fare is just the standard Zone 1 fare. But there was a sign telling me in no uncertain terms not to touch on or off if I was just travelling in the Free Tram Zone.

I ignored the advice of this sign.

Anyway, I was only on the tram for about a minute, given that I was taking it one stop. And so, shortly after taking the above photo. I touched off.

:(

And it deducted $2.65 from my Myki! This despite this trip, from Melbourne Central to Russell Street, being entirely within the Free Tram Zone!

The sign’s a little worse for wear, but it is indeed the Free Tram Zone.

So, yeah, if you do touch on and off within the Free Tram Zone, you will be charged the full fare. I’m not entirely sure why this is². I have mixed feelings on the Free Tram Zone, in that I think free public transport is a good idea, but that the Zone tends to exist basically as a subsidy for tourists — anyone travelling into the city will have had to pay some sort of fare anyway — given no-one else is likely to make the vanishingly few public transport trips that only involve travel in the Zone. This tends to lead to pretty heavy crowding of trams in the CBD, as many people will only take it a couple of stops.

So I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world that the Free Tram Zone will charge you if you touch on — if you’re making another public transport journey that day, it doesn’t really matter because of the daily cap, unless you’re in the unlucky position where you were only planning to make one trip and now have to pay the fare for two.

The only instance in which this really matters is if you do what I did — top up your Myki just for travel in the Free Tram Zone, touch on and off, do no more travel on public transport that day, and thus then get charged for a trip that should have been free. And I don’t think that this is really all that significant.

But it is very silly.

1. I specifically chose the 30 because I remembered it had E-class trams, and I’d be more easily able to photograph those Myki readers. Also, I thought it would be less busy than Swanston Street.

2. AussieWirraway on Twitter suggests that it’s because Myki is only granular enough, at least when dealing with trams, to detect which suburb you’re in, not which stop you’re at. This would make a lot of sense, given some stops in Melbourne’s CBD aren’t in the Free Tram Zone — namely the stop outside RMIT University. I wonder why this is? (It’s to fine students.)