It has been revealed that a whopping $143 million is currently sitting unused on 18 million NSW Opal cards, including the one I lost at the train station just last week (RIP $2).
The staggering amount of unused fares was revealed through a freedom of information investigation by 9News, which discovered that the $143 million sum is lying dormant on Opal cards that haven’t been used in over a year.
Of that, $119.4 million is sitting on adult Opal cards, while $16.3 million is going unused on child or youth, and $7.6 million on senior or pensioner cards.
Naturally, since there’s probably enough for at least one latte still sitting on that card you forgot about, the new stats have commuters fretting not just about if their bus will ever arrive (it won’t), but how they can claim back their unused fares.
Transport for NSW secretary Josh Murray advised commuters to spend their forgotten Opal cash by rolling the unused balance from their old card to their new one, accessing their old card and spending the fares from there, or requesting a refund from Transport NSW.
“Don’t leave hard-earned dollars trapped on unused Opals,” Murray said — probably suggesting we spend it on a latte instead. “Even if you’re no longer using an old Opal card to tap on and tap off, you should still ‘tap in’ and reactivate or refund your cash.”
Murray went on to list the reasons why the sum of unused Opal funds — which has doubled in the past five years — has gotten so eye-watering. He said many Opal cards are damaged, forgotten about or lost with money still on them, and that commuters may have graduated from child to adult fare entitlements without transferring the balance.
The biggest reason, though, is the surging popularity of commuters using their own credit and debit cards for trips — a method which gained steam in 2019 now accounts for over 60 per cent of public transport payments in NSW.
If this news immediately had you wondering just how much Opal cash you’d forgotten about (hopefully enough for a latte), well, there’s thankfully a way to retrieve or use it.
Opal app users can check their balance details online, block any old or lost cards, and transfer the funds to a new one. Commuters can also have their balance refunded directly to their bank account via the Transport NSW website.
Before you go, please spare a moment for that Opal card I lost last week. She was gone too soon, and she never even got to meet that gorgeous metro line.
The post A Whopping $143 Million Is Going Unused On Commuters’ Opal Cards And Yet My Bus Was Still Late appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
