{"id":7516,"date":"2024-02-01T08:23:39","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T22:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.railexpress.com.au\/?p=115213"},"modified":"2024-02-01T08:23:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T22:23:39","slug":"free-public-transport-for-school-students-and-on-sundays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=7516","title":{"rendered":"Free public transport for school students and on Sundays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wa.gov.au\/\">Western Australian Government<\/a> has today announced its latest cost-of-living relief measure, with free public transport to be provided for school student travel and for the entire community every Sunday.<\/strong><span id=\"more-115213\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The announcement follows the success of the Summer of Free Public Transport, which began on December 24.<\/p>\n<p>The new initiatives will provide ongoing cost-of-living relief to Western Australian families \u2013 while continuing support for small businesses.<\/p>\n<p>The Ride to School Free Program will be specifically for travel to and from school Monday to Friday and will be available to those who hold a valid Student SmartRider card, while the Fare Free Sundays will be available to everyone with a valid SmartRider card.<\/p>\n<p>The Ride to School Free Program will commence on Monday February 5 while the Fare Free Sundays will begin on February 4.<\/p>\n<p>Premier Roger Cook explained the program was designed to ease cost of living pressures for WA families.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The cost of public transport for school kids adds up, and this measure alone can save families more than $500 each year,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It builds on our Summer of Free Public Transport, which saw a massive leap in public transport use, and delivered real savings for Western Australians.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Through METRONET, we&#8217;re expanding public transport right across our suburbs \u2013 and now more people than ever will be able to ride free,&#8221; Cook said.<\/p>\n<p>Families who have two children travelling to and from school daily on public transport could see savings of up to $560 across the school year as a result of the change.<\/p>\n<p>The Ride to School Free Program will benefit every student that rides the bus or train to school \u2013 with around 300,000 students currently holding Student SmartRiders.<\/p>\n<p>The new initiatives come on top of existing supports provided by the Cook Government to make travel cheaper for Western Australians including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the free School Bus Service in regional Western Australia;<\/li>\n<li>doubling the conveyance allowance for families that cannot access the free School Bus Service;<\/li>\n<li>two-zone fare cap for travel on public transport in metropolitan Perth;<\/li>\n<li>the Regional Airfare Zone Cap scheme; and<\/li>\n<li>free public transport for seniors during off-peak.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Data released on the final day of the Summer of Free Public Transport initiative has shown the success of the scheme, with a significant uplift in patronage across the network.<\/p>\n<p>Across the first four weeks of the scheme, there were more than 6.2 million SmartRider boardings on public transport, a 40 per cent increase on last year.<\/p>\n<p>The CBD was major beneficiary of the free travel with almost half a million more people travelling into the city than the same period last year \u2013 an increase of 37 per cent.<\/p>\n<p>During the free transport period, those using public transport were seeing savings of around $10 per person for a single return trip and potentially up to $370 across the entire period.<\/p>\n<p>The free Sunday travel builds on the Cook Government&#8217;s existing scheme, which is currently providing free travel on the first Sunday of every month.<\/p>\n<p>Further details on the new free public transport schemes can be found on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transperth.wa.gov.au\/\">Transperth website.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railexpress.com.au\/free-public-transport-for-school-students-and-on-sundays\/\">Free public transport for school students and on Sundays<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railexpress.com.au\/\">Rail Express<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Western Australian Government has today announced its latest cost-of-living relief measure, with free public transport to be provided for \u2026 <\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railexpress.com.au\/free-public-transport-for-school-students-and-on-sundays\/\">Free public transport for school students and on Sundays<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.railexpress.com.au\/\">Rail Express<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-passenger-rail","category-rail-industry-news-australia-new-zealand"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7517,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions\/7517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}