When Transport for NSW first introduced the ability to pay for your ticket using the contactless payment feature of your credit card or phone, this feature was quite limited.
Initially, it was only available for light rail and shuttles, and you won't receive any of the rewards you normally would with your Opal. Now, a lot of that has changed.
As Transport for NSW has officially entered into a partnership with CommBank, passengers paying for the train, light rail, Sydney Underground or ferry using contactless payment will enjoy the same benefits as if they were using an Opal card.
This includes off-peak pricing, transfer discount applied when switching modes, half-price fare after eight trips per week, and daily, weekly, and Sunday limits.
Although the partnership is with CommBank, this is simply due to the company's key role in Australia's contactless payment infrastructure and in any supported format including Visa, Mastercard, American Express and smartphones.
There are reservations, though: The system only applies to adult tickets, so older travelers and concessionaires will want to continue using their physical Opal card for now.
Although buses do not yet have access to this feature, they will get it "soon", according to the message from NSW Transport. Therefore, we can expect to drop our Opal cards by the end of the year.
Uber joins the party
Uber, which has already begun rolling out a new feature to its car-sharing app that integrates public transport information as an alternative way to get to a destination, is another win for commuters in Sydney.
Sydney is the first city in the southern hemisphere to have seen this added feature, and the fourth largest in the world after Denver, Boston and London.
When users select their destination with the help of the company's application, the "Public Transportation" option appears in the usual host of Uber offers. Once selected, this option displays transportation alternatives in real time.
The details of the offer include the price of the entire trip, its duration, as well as walking directions to the train station, bus stop or ferry terminal. narrow.
Uber is using Australia as a testing ground for some of its services: Uber Air's UAV passenger service is set to be tested in Melbourne in 2020 and the company has launched ScUber in Queensland to carry passengers on a visit to the Great Barrier Reef.