Students pay more in the Tron
Tertiary students say they pay more for bus trips in Hamilton than do their counterparts in Auckland and Wellington
Many Hamilton tertiary students are paying more to get to class than their counterparts in Wellington and Auckland.
Hamilton students pay $6.60 cash fare each day to travel to and from class.
The city’s public transport company Busit currently has no concession fares for tertiary students, charging them the adult flat rate of $3.30 one-way.
Auckland’s Maxx and Wellington’s Metlink bus services also have no rate for tertiary students, but charge on a sliding scale depending on distance travelled.
Maxx services charges as little as 50 cents one-way and Metlink $1.60 within inner city locations.
Thousands of tertiary students in Hamilton are looking for the cheapest way to get to their classes.
Both the University and Wintec campuses have limited student parking, forcing many students to use Hamilton’s buses.
But the current cash prices and lack of a student fare has left some travellers unhappy, with many either walking or finding it cheaper to drive and pay for parking.
“I live right by a bus stop, but it’s too expensive. I usually end up walking over 30 minutes to class,” University student Nicole Torburn says. “Most places have concession prices for uni students, if it was cheaper with my student ID, I would take the bus.”
This year BUSIT attended O-week at Wintec city campus to talk about their facilities and giving students chances to win prizes, but focused little on the pricing issue.
“I was confused; they were at O-week telling us to use the bus because it was cheaper, but when I did I was told I had to pay an adult fare because student pricing was only for high school students,” Wintec student Andrew Forsythe said.
Both Maxx and Metlink offer a flat monthly rate for unlimited bus usage. The flat rate works out to be $4.51 per day for as many trips as the purchaser needs for Maxx riders and $4.67 per day for riders on Metlink.
In Hamilton there is no monthly flat rate, but Busit does offer a card that discounts the adult rate to $2.40 one-way.
The Busit card would make the trip $4.80 for tertiary students a day, still more than in Wellington and Auckland.
