You can travel between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne for as little as $10 on affordable bus Flix - but at what cost?

Bus companies, trains and planes weren’t ready for the arrival in Australia of FlixBus, experts say. Neither was FlixBus. Australia’s newest coach operator has made a splash with fares under $10 between Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, scaring the competition into cutting prices. But in its first week of operations, it’s clear Flix has work to do. The European budget travel brand is yet to roll out all of its distinctive lime green buses, leaving most of its first Australian passengers to travel in standard white charter coaches, with a Flix sticker slapped on the side. Sign up: AU Breaking News email On Friday morning’s Sydney to Canberra service, the bus has comfortable reclining seats but limited wifi and no charging ports, footrests, tray tables or bins. The tap in the toilet doesn’t turn on water. It just gurgles. The missing amenities leave some first-time customers grumbling but they’re no surprise to Hamish Lewis, a Sydney student who’s travelled using Flix buses when he was overseas. “One thing I’ve learned in my FlixBus travels is they’re not all created equal,” Lewis says. “I was like, ‘OK, right, I’ve seen this before’.” Related: Victoria urged to ramp up train, tram and bus services – and make off-peak transport cheaper Drivers have cancelled shifts unexpectedly, leaving others to work extra hours on routes they don’t know. “We’re still nutting things out,” Friday’s driver tells passengers. “We’re all human … If I take the wrong exit, just yell out: ‘go on the left, go on the left.’” Wind and weak drizzling rain has interrupted Sydney’s sunshine, heralding Flix’s arrival, and the lights won’t turn on but passengers in the gloomy, half-empty bus are cheery: they have plenty of legroom and they’re on Australia’s cheapest mode of intercity transport. Fully loaded Flix arrives in Australia with low prices and its trademark fast online booking system. When the new fleet is rolled out, it promises wifi, USB charging ports and tightly scheduled travel times. While only a handful of $9.99 fares are available on each coach, prices lift to about $40 on the Canberra corridor and about $60 on the Melbourne route – cheaper than most alternatives, subject to dynamic pricing. Low prices will be made viable by maximising seat sales, which Flix has learned to do in Europe even if it’s yet to be achieved in Australia, according to Yvan Lefranc-Morin, head of Flix’s Australian operations. “The idea is not to run empty coaches, it would not make sense economically,” he says. “We are able to sell as many seats as possible in every ride … and then we can afford to bring the best possible prices.” Cheap bus travel typically takes longer than air or car trips but Flix is aiming to offer even lower fares than other coaches without travelling any slower than a passenger vehicle: three and half hours Canberra to Sydney or 11 hours 20 minutes Melbourne to Sydney. Interactive Melbourne and Sydney, which previously saw just two coaches and two trains each day, each way, are being served by an additional two coach services now Flix has arrived. The company is also nearly doubling the number of coaches running between Canberra and Sydney, adding a dozen trips including a handful of overnight trips. Dr Geoffrey Clifton, a senior lecturer in transport and logistics management at the University of Sydney, says the company’s entry could help turn around the coach sector’s popularity. Intercity buses have declined in popularity since the 1980s as a growing air industry put small operators out of business, data from the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics shows. However, they’ve started to claw back passengers. Interactive “[Flix] can grow the public transport market, and that will be great, getting the other competing operators to improve their services and lower their fares,” Clifton says. “A worse outcome would be if it leads to cannibalisation of the existing market.” The existing market has faced the bulk of Flix’s impact, with bus companies slashing prices. Related: Should Newcastle to Sydney bullet train really be first link built of Melbourne to Brisbane route? Firefly, which charges Melbourne-Sydney customers $65 or $99 for latecomers, has advertised $6 fares for early bookings. A spokesperson for Firefly denies the promotion is a response to FlixBus, saying the company welcomed the competition. “We don’t compromise standards simply to win on price,” they say. “Our customers know exactly who is operating the coach and the level of service they can expect.” Murrays Coaches has also matched FlixBus’s $10 promotion and $40 fares on the Sydney-Canberra route. ‘Make the coach cool again’ “This is the best testimony of competition,” Flix’s Lefranc-Morin says. “[But] we are not competing with other players, I would say we are more partnering with them to make the coach cool again.” Lefranc-Morin says Flix’s main game is get Australians out of cars and off planes, and on to buses, not to beat other long-haul coach companies. That’s a hard task given the average bus customer is someone who can’t or won’t drive, according to the director of transport consultancy Economic Connections, Phil Potterton. “Tourists, younger people, older people: people who don’t have a car, they tend to be the market for coaches,” he says. But FlixBus’s prices – cheaper than a tank of petrol – make the swap possible on the Canberra-Sydney corridor, where automobiles account for five in every six trips, Potterton says. Interactive The operator is also launching on the Melbourne to Sydney route during the peak summer period, when NSW government-operated trains routinely sell out. Travel between Australia’s two biggest cities is dominated by airlines, with Melbourne-Sydney the world’s fifth busiest air passenger route. But FlixBus has arrived as air fares climb and passengers turn away from airlines, which Potterton says gives the company a chance to break through. Sydney-Melbourne return air fares averaged nearly $200 in October and typically climb toward $300 in the summer peak, according to BITRE data. Air travel between the two cities has plateaued below pre-pandemic highs at about 8 million passengers annually. Tickets from Canberra have climbed to nearly $400 return to Melbourne and nearly $500 return to Sydney in October and air travel between the two cities and the capital went backwards in the year to September. Interactive Coaches also have a climate advantage, emitting less than 20kg of C02 per person, a tenth of that emitted by planes, according to Grattan Institute analysis from 2020, and are even competitive with the diesel-electric trains used on intercity routes in Australia. Flix plans to announce new routes to more cities in coming months, hoping its proposition proves attractive to cost-conscious and increasingly climate-conscious travellers. Clifton predicts Sydney-Brisbane, via Byron Bay and the Gold Coast, and Melbourne-Adelaide connections would come next. “Our aim is to expand our network everywhere in Australia where it makes sense,” Flix’s Lefranc-Morin says. The company will need to overcome its teething problems first. Friday’s Sydney-Canberra trip runs more than an hour behind its scheduled three hours and 30 minutes schedule but for just $10, it’s not a bad start.