Half-price myki fares end on 1 January 2027

On Friday 1 January 2027, 34 days after Victorians vote, the daily cap on a zone 1 and 2 myki fare goes from $5.70 back to at least $11.40. That is the full fare gazetted for 2026, before whatever the annual 1 January indexation adds, and before any decision on the 1 per cent Suburban Rail Loop levy that the Auditor-General found has been built into every fare rise since 2025. As at 17 September 2026, Transport Victoria’s half-price fares page did not say what a Tarneit, Craigieburn or Clyde North commuter will pay in the new year.

What ends on 1 January and what does not

Public transport across Victoria was free from March to Sunday 31 May 2026. Since Monday 1 June 2026 every fare has been half price. Transport Victoria’s page, published 22 May 2026, sets it out: the full-fare daily cap fell from $11.40 to $5.70 and the concession cap from $5.70 to $2.85, on metropolitan trains, trams and buses and on regional trains, coaches and subsidised buses, with SkyBus, ferries and non-subsidised regional buses left out. The page gives the end date as 1 January 2027 and says nothing about what follows.

The measure was announced on Sunday 19 April 2026 by Jacinta Allan, then Premier, who gave the reason as the war in the Middle East pushing up fuel prices. Her release put the free months and the half-price period together at $432 million. Paul Edbrooke, then Minister for Cost of Living, said: “Half-price fares keep pressure off the pump for the rest of the year.” Gabrielle Williams, then Minister for Public and Active Transport, said on 1 June: “Half price fares until the end of the year will save commuters more than $850.”

Two things survive January. Children and young people under 18 keep travelling free on a Youth myki. The card costs $5 and is sold at staffed stations, myki retailers and online. On 18 August 2026 the government said more than 600,000 under-18s held one and nine million Youth myki taps had been recorded; Vicki Ward, Minister for Public Transport, said: “Labor is delivering real cost-of-living relief for families by putting over $20 million back into the pockets of parents through free Youth mykis.” Seniors keep free weekend travel, and the early bird rule (free metropolitan train travel when you touch on and off early on a weekday) continues. Neither is part of the half-price measure.

Tap and go with a bank card, phone or watch was rolled out on metropolitan trains in stages from 7 June 2026, reaching the whole network by 14 June, and started on trams on 21 June. The ABC reported on 21 June that concession passengers must wait until 2027 for tap and go, so concession holders must keep using their myki. Matthew Guy, the Opposition’s transport spokesman, said then that the government “should not be celebrating something that should have happened a decade ago”.

The money for an outer-suburban household

Take a full-fare commuter from Tarneit, Craigieburn, Cranbourne or Dandenong into zone 1 five days a week. Today the daily cap is $5.70, so a week costs $28.50. From January, at the 2026 gazetted fares, the same week costs $57.00. That is $28.50 a week more, $114 across a four-week month, and about $1,370 across a 48-week working year, before indexation. The government’s “more than $850” is the same sum run the other way: 30 weeks of the half-price cap between 1 June and 1 January.

Now a two-adult, two-child household in Clyde North or Truganina where both parents commute. The children travel free on Youth mykis, so the only cost is $5 a card. The parents pay $57.00 a week between them now and $114.00 a week from January at 2026 prices, an extra $228 a month. If one parent holds a Concession myki (a Health Care Card holder, a tertiary student, an Age Pensioner on a weekday), that person’s cap is $2.85 a day today and $5.70 from January, so $14.25 a week rising to $28.50.

Trips that stay inside zone 2, such as Tarneit to Werribee or Cranbourne to Dandenong, have a lower gazetted daily cap of $7.20 full fare and $3.60 concession, halved during the discount like every other fare. The weekend and public holiday cap in the 2026 table is $8.00 and $4.00. New Year’s Day is a public holiday, so for most people the first weekday commute at full price will be Monday 4 January 2027.

The 20 per cent rego rebate, the road half of the April package, paid up to $186 for one car and $372 for two, with applications opening on 1 June 2026. For a Wyndham or Casey household, the rebate was a one-off; the half-price fare is the part about to reverse.

Why January’s figure may be higher than $11.40

Victorian fares are re-gazetted each December to take effect on 1 January. From 1 January 2026 the zone 1 and 2 daily cap rose from $11.00 to $11.40, a rise of 3.6 per cent.

That rise added 40 cents a day to the cap. No 2027 figure has been gazetted or announced, and this article does not guess at one. The Auditor-General’s report explains why the recent rises have run a little ahead of inflation.

The levy nobody was told about

On 26 August 2026 the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office tabled “Delivering the Suburban Rail Loop”. It found the government did not announce the new levy on public transport fares that took effect from 1 January 2025, that the levy adds an annual 1 per cent to fares on top of CPI, and that “the government and Transport Victoria did not acknowledge the levy in their public communications about the 2025 and 2026 annual fare increases”. The levy was approved in August 2021. About 60 per cent of the revenue, estimated at $4.8 billion in net present value terms, is to go to SRL East. The ABC reported that the levy would raise about $8 billion over 37 years to 2062 and had collected $6.5 million to June 2026.

On a full-price $11.40 daily cap, 1 per cent is about 11 cents a day. For one household the sum is small; the finding is about disclosure, and about a charge that compounds every January until someone removes it.

The same report found SRL East, the 26 kilometre twin tunnel from Cheltenham to Box Hill, is likely to cost more than the government’s upper estimate of $34.5 billion, with a potential final cost of more than $36 billion, and that the 2035 opening is at risk. Of eight recommendations, the Department of Treasury and Finance accepted the three directed to it, and the Suburban Rail Loop Authority did not accept those directed to it.

What Labor has said since

The ABC reported on 26 August 2026 that the levy was approved in August 2021, when Mr Carroll was public transport minister. Treasurer Colin Brooks conceded that day that the government “should have been more transparent”.

On 27 August the ABC reported that Premier Ben Carroll would abolish it. “I am not going to stand here and re-litigate the past. I am a premier who’s put accountability and transparency at the forefront,” he said, adding that he would “abolish this charge because there was no transparency in its creation and implementation”. He declined to say when he became aware of it. The ABC noted that scrapping the levy will need cabinet approval and will leave a bigger hole in the state budget. Deputy Premier Gabrielle Williams, public transport minister when the levy took effect, said: “What I was unaware of, was that, at any decision-making table, there had been any decisions taken about deliberately obfuscating the structure of our fare increases.” She added: “This is clearly something that has not met the pub test.”

What the Liberals have said since

Jess Wilson, Leader of the Opposition, called the levy “a scandal of the highest order” on 26 August.

What to watch between now and January

For daily riders on the Werribee, Craigieburn, Cranbourne or Pakenham lines, the practical steps are these. Buy a $5 Youth myki for each child aged 5 to 17 now if you have not, because it is the one saving that outlasts January. If you hold a concession, keep the physical card, because concession fares are not expected on tap and go until 2027. Then watch for three documents: the amending conditions in the Government Gazette each December, which will fix the 2027 fares; any cabinet decision on the levy Carroll said he would abolish; and each party’s costed transport commitments before 28 November. A candidate who wants your vote in Tarneit, Clyde North, Craigieburn or Dandenong can be asked directly what a myki fare will cost on 1 January 2027.