Introduction

This report shed light on the services provided by both Opal Card services and the Hop On and Hop Off services. Discussing the major strengths and weaknesses of both the services this report attempts to make a broader approach towards highlighting the feasibilities as well as the difficulties that the Australian public face in availing these services. Opal is a software for contactless fare collection. The services of Opal Card covers the regions of Sydney and NSW. Since its launch in 2012, the services of Opal Card are valid on the bus, rail, ferry as well as the light rail service that connects NSW with Sydney. This card is exclusively designed for being used against the public transport services network. The card is smartcard of the size of credit card and has micro-chip attached to it along with an RFID areal. A certain value equivalent to money is loaded in the card’s microchip and values equal to designated fares are deducted from the stored value of the card on tapping on and off the card reader installed at various locations (Opal.com.au, 2018).

The Hop on Hop Off service is for the city of Sydney only, whereby the passengers who comes to visit Sydney can purchase a onetime ticket and ride any bus of the service by citing the same ticket any time between 24 to 48 hours of the purchase of the ticket. The passengers have the advantage of dropping down from the bus at any designated station and enjoy the view if the city and then ride back on any of the buses of the same service that is available every alternate 15 to 20 minutes. The passengers can simply sit on the open top buses and enjoy the views of the Sydney city. However there are two different routes of this service. These are the Sydney Route and the Bondi Route (Hop-on-hop-off-bus.com, 2018).

Discussion 

Strengths and weaknesses of both the services 

The theory of Tourist Typology can be applied to assess the benefits of the Opal Card. This service is typically used by the daily ferries of the city, including the indigenous people or the people who visit the cities for the purpose of work or on other purpose. The major benefit is that the ferries do no have to book tickets separately for very service. This gives the passengers a freedom to travel. However, other than all these the most important feasibility of using this service is the cost effectiveness. According to Alihodži? Butyrin & Makhov (2017), by using the Opal Card service, the customer can avail the public transport at 21% lesser cost. The daily ride top ups or the Sunday ride top-ups help the daily passengers to save money. This service is equally feasible for the Opal card. The services of the Opal Card were popularised when the card was first introduced in 2012 (McIlroy, 2018). At that time, using those cards at the transport system was easy. However now the number of buses who accept the cards have become less. Hence if someone have purchased the Opal Card panning to travel at ease, the person is going to be deceived the surprisingly less number of transport services who accept the card.

Other major difficulty is in filling up the top up. The Top up card is available for recharge at some selected stations and people would have to visit those stations on purpose to recharge those cards. Besides there is no available E-map that names the stations. In cased if someone is new to the city, he or she would have ample issues in using the card (McKenzie & Lu, 2018).

Hop On and Hop Off services are primarily used by the tourists. This service have been a kind of fun ride for the tourists as they have the scope of viewing the full city in the course of that bus tour. Since the advent of this de-tour, the tourism have expanded greatly in Sydney (Ellison et al. 2017). However, there are some strategic disadvantages of the tour ride also. The frequency of the buses have now spanned to 30 minutes interval and often more. Moreover there are only two routes of the tour and it is very difficult to cover all the different spots of Sydney with only two tour routes. The service is much costlier than the Opal Card Service and is not much favoured by the locals of the place. The Bondi tout is the least favoured. The places like Kings Cross, William Street and Central Station are quite populated but the other places covered by the services of the Bond tour are not popular among the people at all.

Recommendations 

The Opal Card service needs to be implemented properly and diligently. The number of vehicles in the bus and in ferry service have to be made more frequent. An e-wallet service gave to be launched which enable the customers would be able to recharge their cards though their bank account directly, by means of PayPal and other gateways.

The Hop on and Hop Off service have to be mad affordable fore mostly, so that the locals can also avail the offer. Besides the service have to be spread across other important routes also. Hop on Hop off service can be started for the ferry service also.

Conclusion

Analysing the services of the two categories, it can be opined that the Opal card service have ample scope of expanding business. The T-card failure showed the government the importance of an integrated service. Nevertheless, the loopholes of the services shows that supervision of the service quality on the part of the government is also required. In a similar way analysing the provisions of the Hop on Hop off service, it can be commented that this is basically a premium service. Hence during the seasons of tourism like the Boxing Day and so on, the organisation should do more aggravated promotion of their services. However, these two service have made transport easier in Sydney and with further up gradation can become the role model for transport system of other Australian cites also.

Reference List

Alihodži?, R., Butyrin, A., & Makhov, D. (2017, October). Important factors of perceiving and memorizing the city during the process of vehicle and pedestrian traffic. In IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science (Vol. 90, No. 1, p. 012095). IOP Publishing.

Ellison, R. B., Ellison, A. B., Greaves, S. P., & Sampaio, B. (2017). Electronic ticketing systems as a mechanism for travel behaviour change? Evidence from Sydney’s Opal card. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 99, 80-93.

Hop-on-hop-off-bus.com, (2018). SYDNEY HOP ON HOP OFF – BUS TOURS. Retrieved on 25 August 2018. Retrieved from https://www.hop-on-hop-off-bus.com/sydney-bus-tours

McIlroy, J. (2018). Court rejects fines against MUA in Hutchison dispute. Green Left Weekly, (1186), 6.

McKenzie, S., & Lu, E. (2018). Privacy law: Big brother is watching: The hidden cost of the gold opal card. LSJ: Law Society of NSW Journal, (45), 74.

Opal.com.au, (2018). About us. Retrieved on 25 August 2018. Retrieved from https://www.opal.com.au/