Random Prices - Lancashire - Just a bit perplexed

[afyutr]

I sold my car last week, and have determined to use more public transport.

This led me to take the bus from Longridge to Hesketh Bank, changing in Preston. Two singles needed, said the Stagecoach Customer Services - £2.30 on 1 to Preston and £3.90 on 2 to HB. Or buy a dayrider for £4.20. Sold.

I find it odd that I can buy a ticket to get from A to B to C (and then to D and E and back to A) for 30p on top of the single from B to C or 67% of the price of a single ticket from A to C.

Going to Southport later (I didn't know about the Dayrider Lancashire then which would have saved me more!), I then find a single from HB to Southport (25 mins) is £5... 80p more than what I've just paid for a 75 min journey (45 of which is on the same bus). In fact, a single for the first 45 mins costs £3.90, the second 25 mins £5. Maybe bonkers is too strong a word but it all seems a bit plucked out of thin air.

Is this sort of pricing randomness a local anomaly (as HB seems to sit outside most travel zones apart from a few stops on the Preston zone), or is it pretty standard? Would the driver have suggested the Dayrider had I got on and asked for a single to Hesketh Bank? I was surprised that there isn't even a single through fare given it's the same company.

That's my head emptied. On with life.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Usually bus fares were set years ago and have just been increased year on year for ages, while day tickets are set more commercially in price. There is also the stupidity that you can't usually buy through single tickets and thus are heavily penalised for doing a single journey requiring two or more buses.

Neil

 

[Deerfold]

The ENCTS pass is a factor in single fares being expensive as usually reimbursment rates are set as a percentage of single fares or average single fares.

Whether Day tickets are issued instead of normal tickets varies.

My local operator (Keighley and District) will issue a day ticket if the fare is the same or less (and when a driver didn't in error once, the next driver accepted our tickets as if they were day tickets).

 

[Busaholic]

The ENCTS pass is a factor in single fares being expensive as usually reimbursment rates are set as a percentage of single fares or average single fares.

Whether Day tickets are issued instead of normal tickets varies.

My local operator (Keighley and District) will issue a day ticket if the fare is the same or less (and when a driver didn't in error once, the next driver accepted our tickets as if they were day tickets).

As reimbursement rates for use of ENCTS passes come down, seemingly inexorably, it becomes more and more stupid that bus operators charge such high fares for comparatively short journeys: two or more adults travelling together might find a taxi cheaper and not have to wait at a windswept bus stop in the rain. The extra custom would, I am sure in many cases, more than recompense them for the reimbursement lost and might in the end give those rates a chance to stabilise, if not rise.

 

[afyutr]

What is ENCTS? (I'm a relative ignoramus when it comes to some abbreviations)...

As I travelled with a friend last night, we will now certainly in future never take the bus - the relative comfort (less bumpy ride, no waiting around in the wind and rain), ease (no walk at either end), and cost (cheaper in petrol for a 10 mile trip) heavily outweighs the benefits of getting the bus (we can both have a drink).

I get that it is difficult to find a balance and make services commercially viable, but I guess the fact that all three people getting on the bus at our stop last night had to ask the driver to repeat the price suggests it is too high to attract real custom. I feel sorry for the drivers who probably end up getting the stick for it!

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

What is ENCTS? (I'm a relative ignoramus when it comes to some abbreviations)...

English National Concessionary Travel Scheme.

 

[pemma]

I find that commercial bus fares where there's no competition are usually operator dependent and if an operator takes on a route commercially which was previously operated by another operator they adjust the fares to bring them in line with their other fares.

 

[neilmc]

Cash fares are very high due to the time and effort spent by the driver in determining the fare, punching a ticket and dealing with money. It seems the norm now to give a substantial discount on weekly/monthly tickets.

When I lived in Leeds in the 1970s, they introduced a £5 monthly ticket and you had to ride round like a maniac to get your money's worth since the maximum cash fare from a far suburb to the city centre was less than 10p. As a result very few people bought them and it was 90% cash payments, OK in crew bus days but a real problem on busy OPO routes. (When they were extended to the whole of West Yorkshire including expensive NBC fares, that was another matter!).

Now, living in Manchester, almost every commuter would buy some kind of weekly or monthly pass, which works out at £13 a week or £48 a month on Stagecoach. One return journey almost anywhere on 3-4 days out of seven pays for itself, any more is free travel.

Note that train fares within GM are usually cheaper than the bus, especially off-peak, since they don't carry quite the same weighting against short journeys.

 

[radamfi]

Cash fares are very high due to the time and effort spent by the driver in determining the fare, punching a ticket and dealing with money. It seems the norm now to give a substantial discount on weekly/monthly tickets.

We need to be slightly careful here when we say 'cash fare'. In Britain, 'cash fare' has become almost synonymous with 'single fare'. There is almost an implicit assumption that if you don't pay a 'cash fare', then you have a weekly/monthly ticket that is, ideally, sold off the bus.

You can have a single fare that does not need time or effort from the driver. Again, this has a particular connotation in the UK. People in this country generally think that this necessarily means the use of modern technology such as smartcards or mobile apps.

Outside the UK, it is normal for single tickets to be sold off bus, sometimes at a discount if you buy several at once. This does not depend on modern technology. Paper books or 'carnets' or strips of paper have sufficed for many decades. At most, the driver has to stamp the ticket or check that the ticket has already been properly stamped. Obviously smartcards etc. make this even easier.

The typical UK-based sceptic would then say that it can only work in a flat fare system. It is perfectly feasible even in a deregulated environment to have a zonal fare system. And many operators have moved towards a near zonal environment where they have only a small number of fares. Even in a low technology environment, the driver could just have to stamp the relevant number of strips depending on the zones crossed.

In short, you cannot blame the high price of single fares on their high administrative cost. There are alternatives to paying for single fares on the bus in cash which don't require high technology, but the UK bus industry continues to persevere with a high proportion of driver ticket sales.

 

[Deerfold]

We need to be slightly careful here when we say 'cash fare'. In Britain, 'cash fare' has become almost synonymous with 'single fare'. There is almost an implicit assumption that if you don't pay a 'cash fare', then you have a weekly/monthly ticket that is, ideally, sold off the bus.

You can have a single fare that does not need time or effort from the driver. Again, this has a particular connotation in the UK. People in this country generally think that this necessarily means the use of modern technology such as smartcards or mobile apps.

Outside the UK, it is normal for single tickets to be sold off bus, sometimes at a discount if you buy several at once. This does not depend on modern technology. Paper books or 'carnets' or strips of paper have sufficed for many decades. At most, the driver has to stamp the ticket or check that the ticket has already been properly stamped. Obviously smartcards etc. make this even easier.

The typical UK-based sceptic would then say that it can only work in a flat fare system. It is perfectly feasible even in a deregulated environment to have a zonal fare system. And many operators have moved towards a near zonal environment where they have only a small number of fares. Even in a low technology environment, the driver could just have to stamp the relevant number of strips depending on the zones crossed.

In short, you cannot blame the high price of single fares on their high administrative cost. There are alternatives to paying for single fares on the bus in cash which don't require high technology, but the UK bus industry continues to persevere with a high proportion of driver ticket sales.

Such things exist in West Yorkshire. Keighley and District have a number of discounted cards valid for fares within certain areas (including one valid on almost any bus they run) with 12 punchable sections. I have them for two areas as most weeks I have days where I only use one of their buses. They can be bought in Keighley or online.

"Saverstrips" used to exist in West Yorkshire, but the machinery to cancel them had poor reliability and fraud was high. I'm hoping the forthcoming MCard PAYG card will include similar discounts across different bus companies (though oddly it looks like it'll have to be a different card to the one I've already got for loading seasons on).

 

[radamfi]

Such things exist in West Yorkshire. Keighley and District have a number of discounted cards valid for fares within certain areas (including one valid on almost any bus they run) with 12 punchable sections. I have them for two areas as most weeks I have days where I only use one of their buses. They can be bought in Keighley or online.

"Saverstrips" used to exist in West Yorkshire, but the machinery to cancel them had poor reliability and fraud was high. I'm hoping the forthcoming MCard PAYG card will include similar discounts across different bus companies (though oddly it looks like it'll have to be a different card to the one I've already got for loading seasons on).

Just checked out the Keighley & District offering. They've made a reasonable effort compared to other British operators. However they have missed a trick here as they could have split their entire network into zones and so you wouldn't need a different ticket for short or long journeys. I guess interchanging requires another punch of the card. Multi-journey cards have existed in certain areas for a while and they have become more common now we have mobile apps (for example many First areas), and smartcards (for example Metrobus offering 5, 10 or 20 singles in Crawley or Redhill/Reigate). Not really what I'm thinking of, though, as interchanging isn't allowed.

Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire both used the same card technology in the 80s. In GM the Clippercard gave 10 trips for the price of 9 (8 off-peak, 7 for teens) and in WY the Saverstrip gave 12 trips for the price of 10.

In GM it was only valid on buses and was less flexible than the WY version as double cancellation was not allowed at first. One advantage was that there was an Any Distance Off-Peak Clippercard giving 10 off-peak journeys for about £3.70.

In WY multiple cancellation was allowed and could also be used for train fares. So I got a 5p one so I could use it for any bus or train journey in WY. So I generally made 3 cancellations for a 15p child bus single.

But neither area allowed these tickets to be used for a connecting journey.

WY even issued its Day Rover on these cards. These just had one clip.

Both areas citied poor reliability for their withdrawal. But that is nonsense given that Denmark have used these machines for over 34 years from 1979 and have only just stopped accepting Klippekorts on the bus now they have got their Dutch-style smartcard.

http://cphpost.dk/news/the-end-of-an-era-as-plastic-replaces-paper-for-public-transport.4720.html

In Denmark, they used them as WY and GM should have used them. There was a Klippekort for each number of zones, and you could cancel more than once to get the right number of zones. Interchanging was allowed. The time was printed on the card so you would know when it would expire.

 

[Deerfold]

Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire both used the same card technology in the 80s. In GM the Clippercard gave 10 trips for the price of 9 (8 off-peak, 7 for teens) and in WY the Saverstrip gave 12 trips for the price of 10.

Originally the Saverstrip gave 12 trips for the price of 9, dropping later to 10.

WY even issued its Day Rover on these cards. These just had one clip.

Both areas citied poor reliability for their withdrawal. But that is nonsense given that Denmark have used these machines for over 34 years from 1979 and have only just stopped accepting Klippekorts on the bus now they have got their Dutch-style smartcard.

http://cphpost.dk/news/the-end-of-an-era-as-plastic-replaces-paper-for-public-transport.4720.html

The clipper-type day rover was withdrawn long before the individual journey ones. Unfortunately it was not uncommon for machines to print the wrong date on cards - fine if everyone on a bus has the same mistake, not so good once you're miles from the start of the route.

I suspect the big problem with reliability was that so many West Yorkshire ones were at unmanned stations so maintainence was trickier - and on buses the individual operators didn't really want responsibility for them.

Fraud was rife with them too - when I was at school I knew of people who kept a saverstrip going all term for the train or bus or just cancelled 5p every time on the bus for a 15-30p journey.

The problem here was checking. On the bus I can't remember my saverstrip ever being chcecked after boarding in 3 years of using them regularly (before moving to Metrocards most of the time).

The Klippekorte is still going strong in Denmark - the deadline has been extended several times as the smart card is still not tourist friendly or suitable for those doing lots of journeys in a short time period.

In Denmark, they used them as WY and GM should have used them. There was a Klippekort for each number of zones, and you could cancel more than once to get the right number of zones. Interchanging was allowed. The time was printed on the card so you would know when it would expire.

I can't say that wouldn't have been welcome.