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How to use Opal Travel

Opal Travel is the only official Transport for NSW Opal app and it’s free. The app manages your travel across the Opal Network in Sydney and greater New South Wales. With Opal Travel, you can enable auto top ups, view your travel history, easily plan your trip and access other useful public transport information, all on your mobile phone.

Getting Started

Features

The Opal Travel App is packed full of useful features to help you to plan your journey. It is also a useful reference point during your trip.

Click on the link to view a video that describes the main features of the Opal Travel App.

With Opal Travel, you can:

  • Top up, set auto top up or find nearby Opal retailers. (Note: When topping up through the Opal Travel app, allow up to one hour for your card balance to update.)
  • Trip planning for metro, train, bus, ferry, light rail, regional train and coach services.
  • Get Opal card fare estimates.
  • Register your Opal card and manage your linked Opal cards.
  • See progress to your Weekly Travel Reward journey count.
  • Report lost or stolen cards and transfer the balance to other eligible cards linked to your account.
  • View contactless payment activity.

Downloading the Opal Travel App

The Opal Travel App is only available for use on a mobile device such as a smart phone or tablet.

Click on the following links to be taken directly to the Opal Travel App on your phone:

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Home

  • this menu option takes you to the Home screen which has links to useful facilities such as:
  • Linking an Opal Card
  • Linking a credit or debit card to use for contactless payment
  • Alerts and notifications about incidents that may affect your travel,
  • Quick links to your saved trips
  • Scanner that can read any Opal card and tell you the balance of credit

Opal Activity

This menu option displays a chronological list of each journey you have taken using your linked Opal card, the cost associated with each leg of the trip, and any "top ups" you have made to add credit to your card.

New Trip

This menu option takes you to the Trip Planner. This is described in Planning a Trip

Saved Trips

Lists your saved trips for easy access whenever you want to undertake the trip at a future date.

More

This menu option takes you to a screen that has the following helpful information:

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You can also "Chat" with the virtual assistant, the Transport Bot, using artificial intelligence, the Transport Bot can answer your day-to-day travel questions, tell you the best way to get to where you want to go and notify you of service disruptions that could impact your regular commute.

Once you apply your preferences to your trip, it will automatically display the routes that match your preferences.

You can click on each of the listed listed route options to view the charted trip from start to finish, including navigating from one vehicle to the next.

Choose the trip that best suits your personal needs.

Save your Trip

  • Once you decide which route option to take, you can:
  • start navigation if you are ready to start your trip
  • save the trip directions for when you are ready to travel

You can adjust the following trip preferences using the Opal Travel app:

  • Public Transport Modes
  • Fare Type
  • Service Options

You can use the ‘Refine’ option to find a more accessible trip or show options that suit your confidence level.

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Public Transport Mode

Choose which types of transport you want to include or exclude from your results (by default Train, Bus, Ferry, Light Rail and Coach are included and School buses are excluded).

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You can restrict your route options to the modes of transport you are confident in using.

Fare Type

Choose the fare type you wish the Opal Travel App to use in order to calculate the trip fares. The default fare type is Adult, and fares will be shown for the selected Opal card type.

Service Options

Plan an 'Accessible services only' trip

If you have accessibility requirements and some of your trip plan results are not accessible:

  1. Select the check box next to 'Accessible services only'
  2. Click 'Apply' to see results for accessible services only.

There are a range of accessible features which you can learn more about.

Plan a Trip with Opal Only Services

By default Opal Travel includes results for OpalPay services, On Demand, and other bookable services.

To turn off these services in trip results deselect the 'Include OpalPay, On Demand and booked services'.

This will filter out travel options that:

do not accept Opal card or Contactless payments

require booking, such as On Demand and NSW TrainLink services. This also includes OpalPay services that accept payments using Opal cards but which do not count towards any Opal rewards or other benefits.

Apply or Reset

Once you have made your refinements, simply Click ‘Apply’ to see the updated results.

If you change your mind and you want to restore all preferences back to the default state, select 'RESET' in the Refine section or select clear from the results page.

Trip planning helps you to map the route options for traveling from a starting point to a destination.

Planning a trip on the Opal Travel Trip Planner is a simple 2 step process:

Step 1 - Enter your location information

All you need to plan a trip is a starting point, or the location you wish to travel FROM, and a destination, or the location you wish to travel TO.

  1. Enter the starting point of your journey into the ‘From' field, which defaults to "Current Location"
  2. Enter the destination location into the ‘To’ field, as shown in the image below, as "Central Station, Sydney".

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Learn more about the many ways in which you can enter a location.

TIP - Take Me Home Now

Set up a trip from ‘My current location’ to your home address or stop. Save this trip. In the even that you get lost, this saved trip can be used from any location and will help you navigate the way home.

The route options will automatically display once you have entered your starting location and destination.

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Step 2 - Set Travel Time

Once you set up your trip from your starting location to your destination, you can select the time of travel. By default all trips are set as 'Departing now'.

You can change the date and time to leaving by or arriving before a certain time on a chosen date and this will automatically be taken into consideration when generating your trip options.

To change the departure time:

  1. Click on 'Departing now' field under the trip options:
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  2. Select either 'Arrive by' or 'Depart at', depending on your need
  3. Use the date and time wheels to select the date and time of your travel
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  4. The route options will display once you click the Done button.

TIP

Time is displayed in 24-hour format, and you cannot select a date in the past.

Registering your Opal Card on the Opal Travel app lets you:

  • protect your balance if your card is lost or stolen.
  • transfer the balance of a lost or stolen card to another card.
  • set up auto top-up.
  • view your journeys and download your activity statement.
  • set SMS or email alerts.
  • link multiple Opal cards.

How to Register Your Card

To register your Opal card:

  1. Open your Opal Travel app on your mobile phone or tablet
  2. Sign in to Opal Travel
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  3. Click on 'Add an Opal card’ or ‘Register' on Home screen.
  4. To register your Opal card, select the Yes button in response to the displayed question "Do you have an Opal card?"
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  5. Enter your card details as prompted by the screen below
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