Transport Credit Card

Purpose: To encourage an increased use of public transport and other methods of shared transport in order to decrease carbon emissions and poor traffic flow in and around inner-city Melbourne.

Expanding on the idea about using a credit card for public transport to reduce ticketing waste...

Perhaps you could also use this "transport credit card" to:

• hire cars from a shared vehicle facility (ie. the discussion we had on Tuesday about organising to use a car for only a couple of hours a week, instead of owning one and using it all the time even when its unnecessary.). This facility could be set up in all of Melbourne 2030's target suburbs so the service is much more readily available. Perhaps the use of electric cars would further decrease carbon emissions.
  
• to hire bicycles which are readily available within the CBD. In turn discouraging the use of cars in the central city area.
  
• To pay for taxi fares.

By making invoicing and payment processes the same for all these facilities, ie. a person just receives one bill a month for everything, people would be more likely to opt for a shared transport facility over their own cars. Especially if its just a matter of turning up to a car outlet or to an increased number of public transport stops and swiping a card.

Melbourne suffers from poor traffic flow in and around inner city areas, especially during peak hour. This idea would play a part in decreasing traffic.

Elderly people who cannot afford to run a car all year round can use the shared car facility and save money or use taxi services with ease. Their finances would be a lot easier to manage if they only paid one bill a month.

The 'pay as you go' philosophy would appeal to students and youth who may not be able to run a car all year round. It is also more user friendly, in terms of not worrying about having spare change when you need to use public transport etc.