Newcastle MPS have presented a 12,000-strong petition to state Parliament calling on the government to include the city's seniors in a regional travel card scheme.
The NSW government introduced the $250-a-year pre-loaded credit card this year to help regional seniors with the cost of fuel, trains, coaches and taxis but excluded the Newcastle and Wollongong local government areas from the scheme.
The program follows the definition of "regional" used by the Restart NSW fund.
Liberal Goulburn MP Wendy Tuckerman said regional transport "simply cannot compare to the world-class system that residents of Newcastle can access".
She said 9800 people had received the card in her electorate, 15,000 in Port Macquarie and 13,000 in Tweed.
Newcastle-based Labor MPs Sonia Hornery, Tim Crakanthorp and Jodie Harrison lined up on the floor of Parliament on Thursday to point out that some Newcastle residents living in suburbs such as Adamstown, Kotara, Rankin Park, Cardiff Heights and Tarro do not qualify for the card, unlike their immediate neighbours who are in the Lake Macquarie and Maitland council areas.
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"One side of the street gets the card. The other side of the street doesn't get the card," Ms Hornery said.
She said Newcastle had fewer residents than Lake Macquarie and Central Coast, both of which were eligible for the card.
"What's confusing is how this government determines what's regional and what's metropolitan. Often Newcastle is considered neither."
Mr Crakanthorp said Newcastle had many seniors who struggled on the pension, needed access to often expensive medical care and would have benefited "so much" from the travel card.
He said the residents of 75 Madison Drive, Adamstown Heights, were not eligible for the card yet their neighbours at number 77 were.
The Nationals' Tweed MP, Geoff Provest, said more than 330,000 seniors had received the travel card and spent more than $56 million.
"The card was introduced to ease the pressure of travel costs for seniors living in the bush and help them stay connected with family and friends and access services," he said.
He said Newcastle was "not regional" and had access to subsidised trains, buses and trams run by an "efficient" private operator.
He said 37 per cent of people in Newcastle Transport's area of operation lived within 400 metres of a bus route with a 15-minute frequency.
