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Today, my wife and I decided to take our grandson, ( 4 years old) on the bus to Llandudno. The journey only takes about 20 minutes so it was a change from the car. On the way back my wife said to me:" Do you know how much this journey would have cost us if we had to pay?" Of course I didn't as I never took a bus before I retired. " £3.50 each way, each" she said. So that would have been £14 for such a short journey! Why is public transport so expensive?
The same journey by car would have cost me £1 max on diesel for all of us.
What? How did you arrive at that calculation?
OP
OP
gavroche
Getting old but not past it
- Location
- North Wales
Snob value then?
OP
OP
gavroche
Getting old but not past it
- Location
- North Wales
£7 each way for the both of us, time by two for a return = £14.
2 of you, I forgot about that lol!
I have lots of things I don't 'need'. Bet you do too.
OP
OP
gavroche
Getting old but not past it
- Location
- North Wales
When I was a lad bus fares to the local town were 20p beer was 10p a pint.
It's a bit like people complaining that is costs 20p to use a public loo at the train station. The phrase "spend a penny" come about when beer was a shilling a pint. 1/12 of the price of a pint to have a pee, much the same now!
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MontyVeda
a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
- Location
- Lancaster... the little city.
My dad claims it's a fiddle. His bi-weekly trip to the pub is a couple of stops before the bus terminus and therefore a bit cheaper than going all the way... but since he's been using his free pensioner's bus pass, the drivers tend to log his journey to the bus terminus rather than his actual destination... and possibly/probably claiming more than the actual journey cost from the local or county council (or whichever body it is).
edit... although User's explanation of how the system works makes this false claim scenario unlikely. My old man simply observed where they now log his journeys to and we speculated as to why.
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bigjim
Legendary Member
- Location
- Manchester. UK
A Google gave me this.
"For passengers who genuinely don't pay - pensioners and the like - the bus company rings up a ticket to register their journey, and claims the money back from the local council. (This is why, if you're travelling for free on a bus which crosses a county line, you still have to tell them how far you are going - the bus company might have to claim bits of your fare from different councils."
The pensioners' bit is paid by Central Government via the Council"
Also, GOV website says that EU & GOV regs insist operators should not lose out by carrying free pass users and can make a small profit.
Unlike where a loss of fare paying passengers could be a problem.
"For passengers who genuinely don't pay - pensioners and the like - the bus company rings up a ticket to register their journey, and claims the money back from the local council. (This is why, if you're travelling for free on a bus which crosses a county line, you still have to tell them how far you are going - the bus company might have to claim bits of your fare from different councils."
The pensioners' bit is paid by Central Government via the Council"
Also, GOV website says that EU & GOV regs insist operators should not lose out by carrying free pass users and can make a small profit.
Unlike where a loss of fare paying passengers could be a problem.
Primal Scream
Get your rocks off
- Location
- On the road to hell
Ditto and i am on the central line all night Friday and Saturday.
Electric_Andy
Heavy Metal Fan
- Location
- Plymouth
I would use it a lot more if it was reliable. Many times I've been walking to the stop at 18:05, only to see the 18:10 drive by. I can understand late buses, but ones that leave early really boils my blood. This happened to a colleague who relied on buses for work, he was late so often (because of the buses) that he had to buy a car or risk losing his job.
And another thing, they don't advertise or market themselves very well. I found out two weeks ago that a service goes straight to my work (it was on the bus shelter timetable), yet it didn't display the route on the website. So either the bus shelter or the website was out of date. It's as if they don't want to attract new customers.
Apart from that, I find the bus ok and don't mind paying £3.80 to get into town and back so I can drink. I wouldn't want to rely on it for important stuff though
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
I'm pretty sure the private operators could make it work better, but the national operators (First, Stagecoach and co) seem to have figured out a way to make a good profit by engaging in brinkmanship with local councils, running down borderline services by dirty tricks like irregular intervals, clumping (two services on very similar routes within a few minutes), splitting (two services on similar routes but different operators and no multi-operator tickets) and cancelling "evening" services to stop workers on 10-6 or 2-10 shifts using them, to the point where they can get council subsidy by threatening to withdraw the service completely.
It seems to take either a smaller operator like Lynx / Coastal Red coming in and shaking things up (discount for using a multi-operator smartcard, services that call at the hospital instead of trying to get people to buy two single-service tickets) or an operator doing a simple regular all-day "clockface" service that calls at the same point every hour, half-hour or quarter-hour (there's one in the west country but I forget its name) to change things. Then the national operator can no longer count on getting the council subsidy contract if it runs a service down - the challenger may get it instead - and so they seem to actually compete... but then that sometimes results in ludicrous "front-running" where the two operators will keep retiming their buses to serve a route a few minutes before the other... yeah, you're probably right, nationalisation, or at least London/Midlands/Yorkshire-style transport executives is needed.
It probably still wouldn't let us take our bikes on buses, though, as DVSA is the blocker.
(edited to fix typo)
Depends on the service. I have found the First X1 Peterborough-Yarmouth live running data has been a work of pure fiction on at least two occasions this year.
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Wafer
Veteran
- Location
- Somerset/Devon border
I wonder whether the way bus subsidies are calculated varies form place to place. The method I've been told is that bus companies record the number of bus passes used on a router and the number of fares/value of fares purchased and they get the average fare value for each bus pass used.
I think the fair value was based on the average single ticket or something, so it is basically incentivising bus companies to charge higher single fares so their average fare price goes up and they get a bigger pay out from the local authority...
And round here at least they have no idea where people actually get off the bus so have no idea of actual bus route usage, just how many people bought a ticket and where on the route they got on.
I think the fair value was based on the average single ticket or something, so it is basically incentivising bus companies to charge higher single fares so their average fare price goes up and they get a bigger pay out from the local authority...
And round here at least they have no idea where people actually get off the bus so have no idea of actual bus route usage, just how many people bought a ticket and where on the route they got on.
