Originally published in Reportage Online May 13, 2015.
A thin, bespectacled man jogs down Pyrmont Bay towards the Light Rail station, slowing to a halt once he reaches the station’s Opal card reader. Glancing furtively around, he reaches deep into his jacket pocket and produces a large handful of Opal cards.
One by one, he taps each card to the front, and then the back at the reader, before returning them to his pocket. Once he has finished, he turns around and jogs back the way he came.
He says his name is Ken Do. He is an Opal runner, someone who exploits loopholes in the Opal system to make money.
“The business is still young,” says Ken. “I’m basically redirecting the money that would go to Transport for NSW to the customer’s pocket. The system is there, the rules are there. I’m not bending the rules or anything. I’m just working within the system.”
He goes on to explain that Opal running takes advantage of the Opal weekly travel reward. After eight trips, trips are free for the rest of the week until Sunday. If a commuter plans to take long, peak-hour trips during the week, he or she can save money by taking eight, short, off-peak trips on Monday. That’s where Ken comes in.
His customers hand him their Opal cards over the weekend, and on Monday morning he runs back and forth between the Pyrmont light rail station and Star Casino’s Opal readers, tapping on and off again each way. Each card registers that its owner has taken eight, short, off-peak trips, which are the cheapest kind. Ken then redistributes the maxed out Opal cards and his customers pay him whatever amount they feel is fair.
Dr Geoffrey Clifton, a lecturer of public transport and logistics management at the University of Sydney says, “There’s no ideal fare system. Every different fare system will have winners and losers. And in this case, if you can use this Opal runner’s service and get away with it you may well be one of the winners.”
As to whether the system is flawed and the loophole should be closed, he shrugs. “Every system has its problems. There’s no ideal system,” he says.
Dr Clifton explains that when designing a smart card system like Opal, priorities need to be balanced. He says such a system should be simple so that users can figure out how fares are calculated; rewards should be offered to regular users; unfair charges on certain types of users avoided; and loopholes minimised. But the problem is that these are competing priorities. “There’s always going to be a trade-off,” he says.
In September last year, then, NSW Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian told The Sydney Morning Herald that she wanted people to “beat the system”. When she said this she was referring to people who deliberately took shorter bus trips in the beginning of the week. It was only when light rail Opal readers were rolled out in November that people took beating the system one step further and invented Opal running.
NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance issued an official response: “Opal offers many benefits to customers who use their card responsibly and within the terms of use. Transport for NSW does not endorse the activities of third parties who may compromise customer privacy and security or put at risk the responsibilities of a customer under the Opal Terms of use.”
Professor Corinne Mulley, Chair of Public Transport at Sydney University offers another perspective. “On one level, Opal running could be thought of as a bad thing because it reduces government revenues,” she says. “But I think it’s a very good sign that Opal users are prepared to game with the system. It means that we should be able to game people to do what we want them to do.”
The existence of Opal running shows that people are responding to incentives, in other words. People like Ken have pored over the Opal terms and conditions (for some reason) and realised that there are savings to be had. And now that he has started an Opal running business, other people are being made aware of this fact as well.
“It happens with any kind of system,” Ken says. “The system is there and people will try to get the most out of it in whatever way they can. It’s just how people are.”