[aldonius]

In Brisbane I think our ticketing system cost overhead is maybe 10%?

The cost of the programme rolling out new ticketing infra (the first major ticketing system upgrade in ~15 years since we first got integrated ticketing, going from a stored-value smart card to also being able to tap your credit card) is roughly the same amount of money as the annual revenue from fares.

[AnthonyMouse]

So hundreds of millions of dollars to be saved then, and that's just for the periodic upgrades, which are an up-front cost and therefore cost you even more in terms of time value of money.

Then as long as the system is in place you need to pay ongoing costs to repair and maintain the equipment, enforcement against anyone who skips the fare, payment network fees, customer service for anyone with payment issues or damaged cards, connectivity service for anything that needs to be networked, etc.

And the overhead percentage depends on the fares. If it was ~10% when the fare was $5, what is it when the fare is $0.50? Well:

> If fare revenue is now only about $20 million per year, does it even cover the cost of fare collection? The current ticketing system rollout was expected to cost $371m, but ended up at $434m – which appears to cover operations for 17 years from 2018… so $25.5m per year. [0]

[0] https://danielbowen.com/2025/07/11/brisbane-pt-patronage-gro...

And then what is it when that number hasn't included the time value of money or accounting for any of the operating costs?