Exact Fare Only Buses

[Dentonian]

Not if you've only got a note!

Seems a bit ironic that the cities who attract tourists on public transport have the cheapest fares

 

[BestWestern]

Thamesdown in Swindon used to be Exact Fare Only however unfortunately that was scrapped not long after GoAhead took over.

Why on earth is that unfortunate?! Exact fare operation is appallingly user unfriendly, and frankly is totally inexcusable in a climate where people are encouraged to use public transport!

 

[Typhoon]

Exact fare can be made easier to use by charging a coin-friendly sum. Reading is now £2 per journey and £4 per day (£1.50/£2.50 for under-18s). Previously the single fare was £1.90, which I presume got rounded up by quite a few passengers.

Back in the 1980s, Hull (KHCT) operated flat fares on a simple 10p/20/30p fare scale. EYMS also used fareboxes on their in-city and near-city routes, but charged ridiculous amounts like 73p.

Operators are in a lose-lose situation here. For instance, when Reading raised their fares to £1.90, people would give them a hard time because the amount is not coin friendly; if they had gone straight to £2, missing the £1.90 stage out, they would be given a hard time because the rise is 'inflation busting' (which even the £1.90 to £2 stage is).

 

[DunsBus]

Exact fares were introduced on Edinburgh buses in September 1973, initially on two routes (the old 30 and 43, which ran between Waverley and Wester Hailes) before being rolled out across the ECT network from February 1974.

I believe Horsburgh, EVE and Prentice are also exact-fare on their services.

 

[alex397]

I'm not sure I can think of any such operators in the South East.

Edinburgh is place i've experienced it myself. I got on a bus, and tried to pay by contactless card, which certainly didn't go down well with the grumpy driver. And the only cash I had was a £10, which also didn't go down very well. So instead I walked!

As I had paid contactless on the Airlink 100 coming into the city, I stupidly had it in my mind that all Lothian vehicles accepted contactless.

 

[[.n]]

Do there think bus fare are that expensive?

Where I live fare is £6, so paying with a £10 or even £20 isn't that silly, plus most cash machines still only dispense £10 notes as the minimum

 

[Mugby]

Some years ago, Derby City Transport was exact fare only using fareboxes. After de-regulation when the independent Camms of Nottingham started operating local services in Derby with buses which all carried boards in the windscreens saying 'WE GIVE CHANGE', Derby City Transport felt compelled to do the same and have done ever since under it's subsequent owners.

 

[Teflon Lettuce]

I know it's getting a bit off topic, but looking at the debate on notes reminds me of the old LT refusing to accepts ANY notes... and that was in the days when we still had £1 notes

 

[Statto]

Do these firms which insist on 'exact fare only' advertise what their fares are? It seems to be something that bus operators in general dislike doing.

National Express West Midlands/Coventry have there single fares listed on there website, they only have 3 types of fares for single journeys, the day tickets can be more confusing if you don't know the network with a choice of local or network day tickets

 

[Mojo]

Why on earth is that unfortunate?! Exact fare operation is appallingly user unfriendly, and frankly is totally inexcusable in a climate where people are encouraged to use public transport!

Because it’s so slow when the driver has to count coins and change! I remember first going to Birmingham and travelling by bus and being mightily impressed at how much quicker and more attractive the buses were because they didn’t spend half the journey time stationary counting out change.

 

[Typhoon]

Because it’s so slow when the driver has to count coins and change! I remember first going to Birmingham and travelling by bus and being mightily impressed at how much quicker and more attractive the buses were because they didn’t spend half the journey time stationary counting out change.

They certainly were!
Early seventies, peak hour, queue of getting on for 100 at a major city centre bus stop, bus draws up, passengers get on, couple of minutes later, bus draws away, full to the gunwales, driver knows they won't have to stop until the other side of the Middleway. And I'm home in little more than 10 minutes.

I don't remember the tickets referred to in #19, I remember small grey square tickets, minimal printing and a code for the fare so when the fares went up, the machine did not have to be altered - there was a key to the text in the bus.

I reckon that this system was a lot easier to sell to the drivers when going OMO - no giving change, no need for a float, just press a button on the ticket machine console. Drivers doing little more than - driving!

It's important to ensure potential passengers know the system when visiting the area. A college I worked for let students from outside the area know the stop to get off at, the fare (from the main stops) and how the system works when they signed up. It just needs planning!

 

[SCH117X]

Because it’s so slow when the driver has to count coins and change!

If the bus has a coin tray then it only needs a glance by the driver to see if the right amount has been tended, problem is operators who do not have such a "luxury" fitted and take the money by hand. Most operators in any case are flogging multi journey tickets such that the amount of passengers actually buying a ticket per journey is very limited; Mondays noticeably being more busy IME in handing money over as people buy a new weekly ticket, any other day the amount of purchases on an am peak hour working rarely gets to be half a dozen or more.

 

[ARN556B]

And weren't the exact-fare-only VRs in Carlisle a performance. Driver had no access to the cash vault, and the vault door was unlocked by garage staff at the end of the vehicle's working day, releasing an inner locked steel container, which was then transported from Willowholme depot up to the cash office at the bus station for emptying, counting and banking. The cash office had a then revolutionary machine which allowed one container load at a time to be tipped into a hopper, sorted, counted, and bagged ready for banking. It worked most of the time.
Then the garage staff who opened the vault doors went on strike, so no cash containers were removed and replaced, and after about three days the containers were all full and drivers had no choice but to allow free rides. The unexpected side effect was that much of the supply of coins in Carlisle city were trapped in the buses, and armoured vans had to be sent from Newcastle to restock the local bank branches. Eventually the strike ended, it was all hands on deck in the cash office to deal with the inflow of containers. Luckily the machine didn't break down. Normally banking was done by two depot clerks using a car. This one time we needed to use a bus, and every driver who wasn't on a statutory break or about to take a service out was roped in to help, the endless procession of bus staff carrying cloth bags full of coins from the bus to the bank raised quite a few eyebrows.
It would have been worse, but only the VRs had the exact fare system, all the other routes used Setright ticket machines and gave change, with the drivers paying in at the end of their shifts in the usual way. There may have been a handful of conductors left still at that time as well.

I worked at Carlisle from 1969 to 1973 as a conductor and then driver when the depot went 100% one man operation. I don't recognise a lot of the above.

Buses were diverted via the bus station between 1800 to 2000 where the vaults were changed by 'Bus Station Assistants' and placed in a lift up to the cash office. (All Farebox City Service buses passed the Bus Station at least every two hours). There was no secure facility at Willowholme garage to store vaults or cash.

On occasion when buses were changed over part way through the day, they could end up at the garage with an unchanged vault which could overflow and jam the following day if the part filled vault was not changed before going back on service.

There were a small number of strikes at Carlisle involving Traffic and Garage Staffs, though this was before the introduction of Farebox equipped buses,so it couldn't affect the changeover of vaults. If memory serves there 40 Farebox VRT's and Atlantean's allocated to Carlisle with a PVR of 36(?).

40 vaults, full or part filled, would not wipe out the entire amount of coinage available to the Carlisle City area.

Up to the early 70's cash was taken to the bank by clerks, in a car or bus driven by a standby driver.There was zero risk awareness in those days! Ribble replaced the car/bus with Royal Mail security vans to transport the bags of coin to the bank.

Whilst there is some basis in fact, I think someone has told you a bit of an exaggerated tale.

 

[BestWestern]

Because it’s so slow when the driver has to count coins and change! I remember first going to Birmingham and travelling by bus and being mightily impressed at how much quicker and more attractive the buses were because they didn’t spend half the journey time stationary counting out change.

Come on, it isn't that slow! Most cash fares take no longer than the painfully slow process of getting a concessionary pass to 'beep', or taking a contactless payment - that always shocks me, everywhere else it takes a split second but on a bus the machines seem to take forever. In today's world, the options should be either take cash and offer change, or go cashless. Smart card, contactless etc are all available to operators who really don't want the hassle of cash. The reality of exact fare polciy is that there is a minority of operators want the cash trade, but who can't be bothered to reciprocate with the basic customer service measure of offering change in reply. It's incredibly 1970s and smacks of the dreadfully old fashioned attitude that buses are for those who don't have a choice. I've never used an exact fares network, and as a relative 'youngster' (ish!) I find the idea totally bizarre. It's my generation and those after me that public transport needs to win over, yet how many people in their 30s or under are walking about with a bus fare in exact change in their pocket? I can tell you the answer is not many! An awful lot tend not to use cash, and where they do it'll have just come out of a cashpoint and be in note form. At which point, "sorry mate we don't give change" starts become a bit of a turn-off.

 

[Typhoon]

Come on, it isn't that slow!

Until someone sheepishly hands over a 20 quid note for a fare of less than a fiver.

You don't do that on an exact fare bus more than once!

 

[BestWestern]

Until someone sheepishly hands over a 20 quid note for a fare of less than a fiver.

You don't do that on an exact fare bus more than once!

No of course not, but you shouldn't be doing that on any bus! Fivers are fine, tenners if the fare is steep. But twenties are plain rude!

 

[Typhoon]

No of course not, but you shouldn't be doing that on any bus! Fivers are fine, tenners if the fare is steep. But twenties are plain rude!

True, but the message hasn't got across.

The trouble is some cash machines seem to dole out nothing else.

 

[Bantamzen]

I remember when WYPTE/Yorkshire Rider had exact fare buses it was only in Bradford and Huddersfield. Leeds and Halifax buses gave change.

Both areas started giving change in the mid to late 90s initially as a benefit on some routes when the Badgerline fleet (in the case of Huddersfield) and the FirstGroup corporate Sovereign fleet (in the case of Bradford) were introduced.

For much of my childhood the 636/637 Bradford-Clayton were exact fare only with fare boxes

Come on, it isn't that slow! Most cash fares take no longer than the painfully slow process of getting a concessionary pass to 'beep', or taking a contactless payment - that always shocks me, everywhere else it takes a split second but on a bus the machines seem to take forever. In today's world, the options should be either take cash and offer change, or go cashless. Smart card, contactless etc are all available to operators who really don't want the hassle of cash. The reality of exact fare polciy is that there is a minority of operators want the cash trade, but who can't be bothered to reciprocate with the basic customer service measure of offering change in reply. It's incredibly 1970s and smacks of the dreadfully old fashioned attitude that buses are for those who don't have a choice. I've never used an exact fares network, and as a relative 'youngster' (ish!) I find the idea totally bizarre. It's my generation and those after me that public transport needs to win over, yet how many people in their 30s or under are walking about with a bus fare in exact change in their pocket? I can tell you the answer is not many! An awful lot tend not to use cash, and where they do it'll have just come out of a cashpoint and be in note form. At which point, "sorry mate we don't give change" starts become a bit of a turn-off.

It is when the 20th person waves a £10 or £20 note in front of the driver on an early morning service, and the discussion / debate / argument ensues about the driver not having a float & offering a credit instead......

As for pass reading, the Ticketer readers that First are rolling out and in use on other operators read the card inside a couple of seconds, certainly no longer than the time it would take for the driver to read a paper ticket an nod a passenger on. Admittedly some of Arriva's readers take an eternity, but there are better options out there (ironically their child company Yorkshire / Flying Tiger use better readers that are even quicker than the Ticketers).

 

[Robertj21a]

It's always been a great pity that we didn't follow more European practices for fare collection - buying tickets/passes off-board, using street outlets/internet etc. It certainly results in very quick boarding times. It's archaic that, in urban areas, we still have time consuming transactions as every passenger enters a bus.

 

[BestWestern]

It is when the 20th person waves a £10 or £20 note in front of the driver on an early morning service, and the discussion / debate / argument ensues about the driver not having a float & offering a credit instead......

As for pass reading, the Ticketer readers that First are rolling out and in use on other operators read the card inside a couple of seconds, certainly no longer than the time it would take for the driver to read a paper ticket an nod a passenger on. Admittedly some of Arriva's readers take an eternity, but there are better options out there (ironically their child company Yorkshire / Flying Tiger use better readers that are even quicker than the Ticketers).

I disagree, the First machines are in my experience very slow with contactless. Certainly compared to other contactless-reading kit anyhow.

An operator could of course simply decline to accept £20 notes if that's much of an issue. I did the job for a number of years, those tendering silly notes were not a frequent occurrence.

 

[Statto]

Doesn't Dublin Bus issue excess fare ticket if the passenger doesn't have exact fare & have to pay more, the passenger then redeems the ticket for cash at the Dublin Bus travel shop?

 

[BestWestern]

It's always been a great pity that we didn't follow more European practices for fare collection - buying tickets/passes off-board, using street outlets/internet etc. It certainly results in very quick boarding times. It's archaic that, in urban areas, we still have time consuming transactions as every passenger enters a bus.

I agree entirely. However, further to that, I'd like to see a national smartcard. It surely can't be that difficult, and would be far superior to the current approach of everybody very slowly developing their own individual variant that isn't much good anywhere else. 'Oyster National' or similar would be a massive revolution.

 

[BestWestern]

Doesn't Dublin Bus issue excess fare ticket if the passenger doesn't have exact fare & have to pay more, the passenger then redeems the ticket for cash at the Dublin Bus travel shop?

Wow! Time saving indeed!

 

[Bantamzen]

I disagree, the First machines are in my experience very slow with contactless. Certainly compared to other contactless-reading kit anyhow.

I use quite a lot of First Leeds / Bradford services and the readers installed in these (the Ticketers as mentioned have been rolled out in the last few months) are much quicker than previous versions, usually a couple of seconds is all that is needed for them to acknowledge a valid ticket / pass on the card. The one thing that does slow the job down on these are the First Week tickets which the driver has to print then put into the little protective holder before handing to the customer. I can remember passengers having to do this themselves with some older Metro passes so quite why they can't be asked to set their own with these I'm not sure. It would speed up the job no ends, especially on Monday mornings!

An operator could of course simply decline to accept £20 notes if that's much of an issue. I did the job for a number of years, those tendering silly notes were not a frequent occurrence.

It didn't seem to be as much of a problem in the past, but more recently I've seen a lot more people waving notes at drivers especially on morning services. However with contactless payments also rolling out across operators, the same people waving notes just obtained from a nearby ATM may start to use their cards directly instead.

 

[AJW12]

The one thing that does slow the job down on these are the First Week tickets which the driver has to print then put into the little protective holder before handing to the customer. I can remember passengers having to do this themselves with some older Metro passes so quite why they can't be asked to set their own with these I'm not sure. It would speed up the job no ends, especially on Monday mornings!

They aren't actually supposed to do that any more, as of earlier this year - they copied York in drivers being told they could just give customers the ticket and the sleeve and they do that themselves once they've sat down. But then that didn't always get listened to in York, and did waste time, sounds like the same is happening in Leeds.

And exact fare only does massively speed up the boarding time. In Edinburgh it definitely shows and makes the process so much quicker. I've been on many buses in York where there's been two or three people with the wrong fare or a cash note and it easily adds two/three minutes to the time, which on a frequent route only encourages the inevitable bunching up of buses.

 

[Teflon Lettuce]

I've never used an exact fares network, and as a relative 'youngster' (ish!) I find the idea totally bizarre. It's my generation and those after me that public transport needs to win over, yet how many people in their 30s or under are walking about with a bus fare in exact change in their pocket? I can tell you the answer is not many! An awful lot tend not to use cash, and where they do it'll have just come out of a cashpoint and be in note form. At which point, "sorry mate we don't give change" starts become a bit of a turn-off.

so you think it totally bizarre that your local supermarket insists you put a £1 coin into the trolley to be able to use it? another example of a "flat fare" and one where you are just as likely to have only just gone to the cash machine... or are you saying you never use a public car park... their machines are usually non-change giving and so therefore "exact fare only"

 

[SCH117X]

Operators could easily tackle issues of people having the wrong fare by clearly displaying fares as part of the bus stop information.

so you think it totally bizarre that your local supermarket insists you put a £1 coin into the trolley to be able to use it? another example of a "flat fare" and one where you are just as likely to have only just gone to the cash machine... or are you saying you never use a public car park... their machines are usually non-change giving and so therefore "exact fare only"

Its easy to make sure you have a £1 coin or an equivalent token for a trolley, less so that you have the x quid y pence needed for the bus fare. And what are you supposed to do when you are a few pence short in change for the fare and the cash machine you used yesterday only has £20 notes in it.

 

[Teflon Lettuce]

Operators could easily tackle issues of people having the wrong fare by clearly displaying fares as part of the bus stop information.

Its easy to make sure you have a £1 coin or an equivalent token for a trolley, less so that you have the x quid y pence needed for the bus fare. And what are you supposed to do when you are a few pence short in change for the fare and the cash machine you used yesterday only has £20 notes in it.

same difference in a public car park in a strange town... exact fare only and you don't know what the charges will be until you get there... with of course the added fun of trying to work out how long you're gonna be there... the equivalent of not knowing where you're going to get off the bus...

seriously it seems to me this anti- exact fare thread is just another example of people applying different standards of expectation to the bus than they do to other areas of life

 

[radamfi]

It's always been a great pity that we didn't follow more European practices for fare collection - buying tickets/passes off-board, using street outlets/internet etc. It certainly results in very quick boarding times. It's archaic that, in urban areas, we still have time consuming transactions as every passenger enters a bus.

Even outside Europe Britain looks painfully slow. We like to look down on Americans on not having a clue about public transport, yet even they use quicker boarding methods. They have long encouraged off bus purchasing for singles using tokens and more recently using magnetic cards or smartcards. Their stops are often ridiculously closely spaced, though, so journey times can still be slow.

Britain may well have the slowest bus boarding methods in the developed world, especially for big city transport.

 

[carlberry]

so you think it totally bizarre that your local supermarket insists you put a £1 coin into the trolley to be able to use it? another example of a "flat fare" and one where you are just as likely to have only just gone to the cash machine... or are you saying you never use a public car park... their machines are usually non-change giving and so therefore "exact fare only"

Supermarkets always have alternatives (baskets for example) and theres usually alternative parking methods. How many exact fare only shops are there, especially ones that are exact fare and only tell you the price when you get to the till?