Sneaky commuters have managed to exploit a travel smart card loophole to diddle the taxpayer out of $8 million in unpaid fares, new government figures have revealed.

A report by the New South Wales Audit Office has found increasing numbers of Sydneysiders are going into negative balances on their Opal cards to avoid paying the full fare.

There are now more than one million Opal cards in circulation with a negative balance.

The report also found Sydney trains are both less punctual and busier since a controversial timetable change last year with more lines now chronically overcrowded.

The analysis has warned it will be “hard to maintain” even current poor standards of punctuality after 2019 unless huge amounts of extra capacity are pumped into the network.

Labor has jumped on the report, saying it is “independent and irrefutable evidence” that the timetable change was a “dud” and should be ditched.

A slew of new light rail and train lines are under construction which should ease capacity in Sydney. But the report said these won’t open quick enough to stop the crush.

OPAL LOOPHOLE

A total of $7.8 million is now outstanding on 1.1 million Opal cards. Last year alone, Transport for NSW (TfNSW) failed to collect $3.8 million owed by commuters using the Opal hack.

This allows passengers to tap on successfully even if they have only a few dollars left on their cards.

If the journey cost ends up exceeding the minimum fare, the balance on the card will go into a minus amount with the shortfall clawed back next time the user tops up.

But some passengers are simply ditching cards with a negative balance and then starting afresh with a new card.

Smart cards in most Australian cities come at a cost of about $6, usually refundable, which means any fare shortfall can be at least partly covered.

However, Opal cards are free to acquire so nefarious commuters can simply ditch the card that’s in arrears and then top up a new one.

Nowhere is this loss bigger than at Sydney’s two airport stations where a “station access fee” of $14.30 is levied on each passenger which is far higher than the minimum amount needed on an Opal to access the network.

“TfNSW advised it is liaising with the ticketing vendor to implement system changes and are investigating other ways to reduce the occurrences,” said the report.

Yet a plan to charge $10 for each Opal card, which would go a long way to stopping the evasion loophole, has been rejected.

This week, the NSW Government announced that credit and debit cards can now be used to tap on and off the rail network. Transport bosses would love commuters to take up this option as it would mean the total fare amount would be deducted direct from the passenger’s bank accounts.

TIMETABLE PAIN

The large subsidy NSW taxpayers chip into each fare increased last year. Averaged out, the full cost of each individual train journey was $12.80 in 2017-18. But passengers only contribute around $2.80 of that in fares, or 19.2 per cent of the total cost.

The year before, train passengers contributed almost 20 per cent of the fare.

Each bus journey costs $3.10 with passengers paying 48 per cent in fares. Again, this is down on the 51 per cent recovered in fares previously.

Globally, very few transport networks pay for themselves through fares alone but exceptions include London, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Punctuality is also down on rail services. The report said things were better before the huge November 2017 timetable recast.

“Prior to the timetable change, three out of four train lines met the punctuality target. After the timetable change, only one train line out of five met the punctuality target,” the Auditor General wrote.

The new timetable increased overall capacity but the pay-off was some direct journeys to the CBD were cut, older trains were pushed back into service and the ability of the network to recover from incidents was reduced.

2019 CRUNCH TIME

The Auditor General said the long lead time for new transport infrastructure, such as the city and south east light rail and Sydney Metro, meant the network was in danger of cracking under the strain.

“The rail agencies will find it hard to maintain punctuality after 2019 unless the capacity of the network to carry trains and people is increased significantly.”

Labor laid the blame on Transport Minister Andrew Constance.

“This is independent and irrefutable evidence that Andrew Constance’s timetable is a dud and that Sydney’s train-travelling public are the losers,” said his opposition counterpart Jodi McKay.

“He should swallow his pride, ditch his timetable and put in place a more workable program that actually delivers for the hundreds of thousands of train commuters.”

Embarrassingly, trains have also got more packed since the timetable recast.

Sydney Trains defines a crowded train as being at 135 per cent of the seated capacity.

In September 2016 one line breached this limit. A year later, two months before the timetable change, two lines saw regular peak AM loads above this benchmark.

By March 2018, six lines were at 135 per cent capacity — the T1 Northern, T1 Western, T2 Leppington, T4 Illawarra, T5 Cumberland and T8 South.

Uniquely, the T4 Eastern Suburbs line, which heads from the CBD to ritzy Bondi Junction, was the only line to be below 100 per cent capacity in the AM peak.

Punctuality was a mixed bag on the buses. Generally, government run networks in the inner city were below target while private operators in the suburbs fared better. But the new double decker B-line buses to the city’s northern beaches, run by the government, were on time. Sydney’s ferries were above target for on-time running.

News.com.au has contacted the Transport Minister for comment.