To be honest, I’m not surprised. Driving in peak hour is already bad enough that a significant portion would choose it rather than drive even with the extreme prices. The cost of parking in the CBD along with the inconvenience of how awful peak hour traffic is helps offset that.

But leisure trips are outside of peak hour and usually to places where parking is easy. They’re also more likely to involve larger numbers of people as you go with the whole family. People are more likely to change their mode of transport if it’s cheaper.

With the ferry specifically, it’s often just a trip down the river and then back up. The cost of that trip before would be $3 per adult if you can start at the river, but higher if you’ve gotta travel in from zone 2 or 3 first. For a family of 4 that’d be at least $9, which isn’t actually a lot, but it psychologically feels like a hell of a lot more than $2. So it’s a fun little treat that’s basically free now. People are more likely to do that.

TL;DR leisure trips are much more price elastic than commutes are.

Public transport in Perth has been free throughout the summer school holidays the past couple of years. I don’t know if the scheme affects passenger numbers, but we love it!

Fares cap at $5 the rest of the time. So even when not free, it’s pretty cheap to get about. It’s 124km from Yanchep to Mandurah, the train takes about two hours to make that trip. Pretty good for $5 - that’s further than Brisbane to Sunshine Coast.

Yeah but your electricity prices definitely went up WAYYYY more than $1000 due to these governments that just cant say no to immigration and selling off their resource assets. So he gave you the illusion of $1000 cheaper LMAO.