u/Marlon_Ranch

Felt a bit nostalgic. What a difference and gives me joy comparing. The current station is more or less almost unrecognisable from the old station of my childhood.

You notice details of little things that were lost with the modernisation, such as the little food shops on the concourse of the old station, or at the top of the York St escalator.

“Then” photos all from Wikipedia commons.

I was looking through some photos from 2016 as a flashback and stumbled upon a screenshot from the Opal app back then, highlighting a beloved but now very much forgotten perk - back when after 8 paid journeys on Opal, you got free travel for the rest of the week, across the entire network on all modes of transport.  I looked through so many of my old photos looking for other picture references to this perk and indeed, there were hardly any. 

Some context is this perk was introduced as part of Opals original incarnation from the transition from paper tickets. The idea being the former weekly tickets were the cost of 4 return trips between an origin and destination stations, as such, 8 paid trips then free would be to match this up and help encourage uptake. However a key difference was unlike the paper weekly tickets, with Opals free travel you could use the free trips for those other trips that went beyond your office or uni commute. 

It didn’t take long for people to discover the 8 trips to clock up could be of a short length, eg that you could walk between Pyrmont Bay and The Star tram stops tapping and going, and then use the free travel for the rest of the week to take longer and more expensive trips for free. Gladys as the original minister encouraged and gave her blessing (although years later I realise she probably in reality despised everyone who did it) and sure enough not long after when Andrew Constance became the new minister, he became the face of shutting down this loophole, and exactly a decade ago today, he announced the free trips were being replaced by half price trips. I still remember that announcement and thinking how much it would suck the fun out of recreational travel vs the free trips. I do think since the $50 cap came in its much better than 2016-2019 when it was a $62+- adult weekly cap with half price fares after 8 trips, that just discouraged taking extra trips for me, however now the $50 weekly cap its a lot easier to unlock the free travel.

I have vivid memories of using the free trips after 8 to ride the Manly Ferry for the first time in my life (I was a teenager back then). 

Does anyone else look back fondly to this time?