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Free Bus Sunday in West Yorkshire

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Andyh82

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The Mayor Tracy Brabin has announced that bus travel in West Yorkshire will be free on Sunday 31st October

‘Free Bus Sunday’ will be co-funded by the Combined Authority and West Yorkshire’s bus operators following a suggestion from the Mayor. On Sunday 31 October, there will be no charge on any bus journey within the districts of Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield.
This is to encourage more people to use public transport and is being funded by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and the bus Operators
 
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Leeds1970

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bit of a waste of time doing it on a Sunday as quite a few routes don't operate and those that do are a greatly reduced frequency.
 

Llandudno

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bit of a waste of time doing it on a Sunday as quite a few routes don't operate and those that do are a greatly reduced frequency.
Agreed, simply a cheap political PR stunt.

Let’s hope that any ‘new’ passengers who decide to leave their car at home aren’t waiting for a bus that fails to turn up owing to driver shortages especially on low frequency Sunday services…
 

Leeds1970

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the T&C's are good (says sarcastically) you can get a bus from Leeds to Harrogate/York & even Scarbourgh for free but have to pay to come back
the little PR stunt today was no better capping daily fares to £5.50, which is technically already in place in the form of the Metro 'Daysaver' ticket
 

Bayum

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the T&C's are good (says sarcastically) you can get a bus from Leeds to Harrogate/York & even Scarbourgh for free but have to pay to come back
the little PR stunt today was no better capping daily fares to £5.50, which is technically already in place in the form of the Metro 'Daysaver' ticket
Where is this information? I can’t find anything - WyMetro says ‘any’ bus journey is free.
 

GusB

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Where is this information? I can’t find anything - WyMetro says ‘any’ bus journey is free.

From the link in the opening post:
The Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, will make the announcement at this Friday’s (22 Oct) meeting of the Combined Authority. ‘Free Bus Sunday’ is intended to encourage people in the region to take the bus to be greener - and help raise awareness of next month’s United Nations Climate Change conference in Glasgow (COP 26).

Tackling the climate emergency and protecting the environment is one of the Mayor’s 10 pledges to West Yorkshire. Tracy Brabin is attending COP26 to set out how this and other pledges are supporting urgent, affirmative action in her region to respond to the climate crisis. This includes encouraging people to swap private car travel for public transport.

‘Free Bus Sunday’ will be co-funded by the Combined Authority and West Yorkshire’s bus operators following a suggestion from the Mayor. On Sunday 31 October, there will be no charge on any bus journey within the districts of Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield.

The plans have been developed by the West Yorkshire Bus Alliance with the participation of all bus operators including First, Arriva and Transdev.
 

GusB

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But none of that shows any other information suggesting only a single journey is free- return is paid for.
It mentions nothing about single or return tickets in the article - only that:

‘Free Bus Sunday’ will be co-funded by the Combined Authority and West Yorkshire’s bus operators following a suggestion from the Mayor. On Sunday 31 October, there will be no charge on any bus journey within the districts of Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield.

That seems clear enough to me, unless I'm missing something.
 

Andyh82

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the T&C's are good (says sarcastically) you can get a bus from Leeds to Harrogate/York & even Scarbourgh for free but have to pay to come back
the little PR stunt today was no better capping daily fares to £5.50, which is technically already in place in the form of the Metro 'Daysaver' ticket
A lot of the Mayor’s proposals are reliant on people not knowing about the ticketing arrangements today so she can announce stuff that already happens or pretty much already happens. Andy Burnham has done the same in GM as well.

It’s regularly mentioned that people having to catch more than one operator currently have to pay twice and it costs X, and if the buses were in public control it will all be on one ticket and cost Y, and the public lap this up. Nobody mentions we’ve had multi operator ticketing for decades.

It mentions nothing about single or return tickets in the article - only that:



That seems clear enough to me, unless I'm missing something.
In the first of what will no doubt be many pages of people here trying to find unusual situations to pick holes in it and find confusion where there isn’t any confusion, the poster was suggesting you could travel cross boundary for free.
 

Leeds1970

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if you ask at a metro travel centre, they have an internal email about the 'offer' stating that cross boundary travel outbound is free however you would have to pay to go back into west Yorkshire. Journeys undertaken wholly within West Yorkshire are free whether you are making a single / return or bus hopping all day is irrelevant.
 

Starmill

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bit of a waste of time doing it on a Sunday as quite a few routes don't operate and those that do are a greatly reduced frequency.
But surely that's kind of the point. It puts significantly less commercial risk on the promotion.

Given all of thr commercial losses are being funded directly through public funds don't you think it's wise to be sparing?

capping daily fares to £5.50, which is technically already in place in the form of the Metro 'Daysaver' ticket
A cap on PAYG fares and a day ticket aren't the same thing. If you want to benefit from the latter you must make your decision before you start your first trip of the day. With PAYG, you just go.

Nobody mentions we’ve had multi operator ticketing for decades.
They're inevitably at a price premium of course.
 

61653 HTAFC

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It’s regularly mentioned that people having to catch more than one operator currently have to pay twice and it costs X, and if the buses were in public control it will all be on one ticket and cost Y, and the public lap this up. Nobody mentions we’ve had multi operator ticketing for decades.
One of the big complaints is where routes are shared between operators, as used to be the case on routes 231 and 232 between Huddersfield and Wakefield. In those cases, even a simple out-and-back return journey requires individual single tickets or a Metro DaySaver depending on times. As the passenger has very little say in who operates their service, this seemed like what often gets called a "postcode lottery" with people on one route being charged more for a similar journey that might cost less one village over.

I don't know if Metro would have had the power to enforce cross-brand ticket acceptance on shared routes, but the ability and willingness to do so would have made a big difference.
 

Andyh82

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A different way of looking at it is that the Metro DaySaver is the standard price and operators own day tickets are a cheaper price.

Hence if anything is going to be removed, it’s the operators own tickets
 

bluenoxid

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A challenge is routes where the city operator runs during the day and then a local operator runs a tender in the evening. The route loses passengers because they effectively have a daytime only service and the tendered service tends to be an individually priced route.
 

Andyh82

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The Metro website confirms that boarding any bus in West Yorks will be free on Sunday, so for cross boundary routes, outbound will be free, inbound will be normal price

I suppose it’s the easiest way to do it for the small number of journeys it affects
 

carlberry

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I don't know if Metro would have had the power to enforce cross-brand ticket acceptance on shared routes, but the ability and willingness to do so would have made a big difference.
The legislation to allow it has existed for some time. Oxford used it to regulate various services for example.
 

61653 HTAFC

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The legislation to allow it has existed for some time. Oxford used it to regulate various services for example.
Then it's ridiculous that such regulation hasn't been used. Presumably the big bus operators would threaten to pull out or (cynic hat on) attempt a legal challenge. This begs the question:- What are PTEs actually for?
 

TheGrandWazoo

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Then it's ridiculous that such regulation hasn't been used. Presumably the big bus operators would threaten to pull out or (cynic hat on) attempt a legal challenge. This begs the question:- What are PTEs actually for?
They didn’t in Oxford but as we’ve seen with TFGM and Nexus, the PTEs are more interested in having control.
 

johncrossley

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Timetables are integrated between Oxford Bus Company and Stagecoach on certain routes but apart from that it isn't so different to West Yorkshire. They have their own tickets which undercut the joint tickets.
 

Andyh82

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The main gap in West Yorks I feel is a multi operator ticket for just one area

So you can get a FirstDay for just Bradford, but a MetroDay covers the whole of West Yorkshire and is hence much more expensive
 

Llandudno

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The main gap in West Yorks I feel is a multi operator ticket for just one area

So you can get a FirstDay for just Bradford, but a MetroDay covers the whole of West Yorkshire and is hence much more expensive
How much is a MetroDay ticket, is it really expensive compared to 2 x single fares?
 

Andyh82

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How much is a MetroDay ticket, is it really expensive compared to 2 x single fares?
It was £6.70 on bus but they’ve recently reduced it to £5.50

For comparison at FirstDay Leeds is £4.70, Bradford 4.70, Halifax and Huddersfield 4.50 and FirstDay West Yorkshire £5.20 (all about 10p cheaper on the app)

So you can see jumping from 4.50 to 6.70 if you wanted to use an evening journey run by a different operator was a bit of a jump. Now they’ve reduced it to 5.50 it’s not as bad
 

Deerfold

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The Metro website confirms that boarding any bus in West Yorks will be free on Sunday, so for cross boundary routes, outbound will be free, inbound will be normal price

I suppose it’s the easiest way to do it for the small number of journeys it affects
Someone doesn't seem to have told drivers.

On the 66 within West Yorkshire I was called back to be given a zero fare ticket. I'd planned to get the previous 62 to Keighley but none of my buses were tracking on the Transdev app and it came whilst still showing "4 minutes" when I was a minute from the stop.

On my late running M4 the driver (who was irritated as there were no available loos at Keighley bus station) was charging fares to those traveling beyond the West Yorkshire boundary (it travels to North Yorkshire then Lancashire) but not issuing zero fare tickets to those who weren't.
 
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ChrisC

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I don’t think you can grumble at £5.50 to be fair!
I suppose whether it seems expensive or not depends very much upon the amount you are used to paying and more importantly the area where you live. To me £5.50 for a multi operator ticket is unbelievably cheap. Where I live outside of a city boundary in a county council area there are no multi operator tickets. The single operator day tickets for my two local bus companies are £6.50 (£10.50 before 9am) or £7.20. These are still often far less than buying 2 single tickets. Even a return journey of just a few miles using more than one operator can very easily cost well over £12.

I was listening to Andy Burnham on the radio last week talking about the high bus fares in Manchester, where a multi operator day ticket costs £6, and how he would like to see fares reduced to be as low as in London. When I go to Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, West Midlands or most large cities I am always amazed at how low the fares are compared to most county council areas.
 

JRT

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Quiet in Bradford today, though weather not too good so may have been a factor. Set off 35 mins early just in case of capacity problem or delay due to road closures but seemed to be a normal or ½ normal amount of pax. Pax on bus from town commented that the free bus day not widely advertised.

Someone doesn't seem to have told drivers.

On the 66 within West Yorkshire I was called back to be given a zero fare ticket. I'd planned to get the previous 62 to Keighley but none of my buses were tracking on the Transdev app and it came whilst still showing "4 minutes" when I was a minute from the stop.

On my late running M4 the driver (who was irritated as there were no available loos at Keighley bus station) was charging fares to those traveling beyond the West Yorkshire boundary (it travels to North Yorkshire then Lancashire) but not issuing zero fare tickets to those who weren't.
On a normal day after 09:30, using an ENCTS pass on the 66 is just marked off on the detector, but on the M4 you have to have a zero fare ticket with the destination.
 

Deerfold

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On a normal day after 09:30, using an ENCTS pass on the 66 is just marked off on the detector, but on the M4 you have to have a zero fare ticket with the destination.
So the other way round!

When MCards first came in I used to get a zero fare ticket on the M4, for about a year.
 
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