DaveHarries
Established Member
Hi Chris,A local paper recently carried a story about lost tourist attractions, and one such was 'illustrated' with an advert (dating sometime between 1934 and 1959) detailing bus connections. What also caught my attention, though, was that this attraction considered a child to be aged between 1 and 12.
It seems to me that just as tourist attractions have entry fees, us operators have a variety of different policies on "reduced rate" fares, be it purely in terms of age, options, ID requirements, etc. Many of them seem to consider a child fare to expire aged 16, and thus make travel substantially more expensive just at the point (aged 17) when they have an option on the horizon other than parental taxi or their own steam. So this got me thinking...
- when does a "legal child" (i.e. under 18) stop being a child on your local bus operator(s)?
- Are there any requirements beforehand to "prove" eligibility for reduced rate fares?
- Any other restrictions? (e.g. no return fares)
Do these "restrictions" have any effect - positive or negative - either from their, parent, or other adult perspectives? (And not just from the local newspaper "my kid got left behind in the rain by uncaring bus driver" headline perspective!)
For ease of discussion, bearing in mind the growing number of travel passes, I'm referring to normal fare conditions, i.e. an "on-bus" fare, "paid" to the driver for a particular journey or series thereof.
My local operator, Arriva Kent & Surrey, seems to still have the same policy as when I was that age, namely payment due between 5 and 16, with no ID card required (just the ability to front out the driver), and no return or child fares before 9am... which led to the quirk that once I no longer qualified for statutory travel under the 3 mile rule at 16, my journey to school cost twice as much as my journey home!
FirstGroup (certainly in Bristol) say that Child tickets are for 0-15s.
Dave