VIEW News

The number of go card outlets at rail way stations will double on Monday as the State Government steps up its efforts to enable the move to go card for commuters.

Transport Minister Rachel Nolan said new measures meant go cards would be more accessible than ever and acknowledged that more needs to be done to aid the switch for commuters.

"From Monday we'll double the number of go card outlets at railway stations [34 to 68] and have more than a 100 Helping Hands staff selling go cards and providing assistance to people across the network," she said.

"That means almost 90 per cent of train customers will have access to a go card at their home or destination station on Monday and I can also confirm that all attended QR stations [123 stations] will sell go cards when schools goes back."

Ms Nolan said that the fact that more and more commuters would return to work throughout January meant there was a duty to ramp up the go card's availability and dis tribution in coming weeks.

"TransLink staff will continue to assist with questions and additional staff will sell pre-loaded go cards at all major busway stations and key interchanges across South East Queensland from Monday," she said.

"The change from paper tickets to go card is a big change for people to make and I acknowledge  that we could have done more to let customers know how and where they can get their go card."

The move to smart card technology continued across South East Queensland this week as passengers bought go cards in record numbers.

Almost 20,000 go cards were sold across the network from Monday-Friday, in addition to the 65,000 go cards purchased in November and December.

"On Thursday there were 191,288 trips taken across the network using go card, almost four times the average daily number taken during the first week of January 2009," said Ms Nolan.

"We have now distributed more than 550,000 cards and seen almost 70 million trips taken on the go card."

The Minister said more would be done to promote the availability of go cards as more people returned from holidays.

"SEQ has 266 retail go card outlets while Perth has 60 and Sydney and Melbourne are still struggling to roll out their smart card systems," Ms Nolan said.

"One of the advantages of the go card over paper ticket systems is that a go card only needs to be purchased once and then can be topped up at more than 1000 locations across the network."

Ms Nolan said almost 20 per cent of sales last week had been online or via the call centre on 131230.

"If someone has difficulty accessing a retailer in person they can use the website or call centre to order one and almost 4000 people have taken up that option this week alone," she said.

A full list of retailers and top-up options are available at www.translink.com.au.