Why are bus ticket prices not made available online?

[radamfi]

a true Oyster type system would require touching out too, something that wouldn't be easy as practically all buses in the area are single-door.

Trent Barton have done touch-in touch-out for a number of years now and they have single door buses.

You can even have do zonal fares without touch out. For example, in Helsinki you press a button on the reader while touching in to indicate what zone you want.

 

[Bletchleyite]

"X please" to the driver before touching shouldn't be any slower than the latter idea, really. It's the faffing about sorting out cash that takes time.

 

[Tetchytyke]

This still involves a fair amount of interaction between passenger and driver. I don't see that being much of an improvement over cash payment.

It depends. The ability to pre-load money on a card and top-up off bus should make boarding quicker. It isn't the asking for a ticket that takes the time, it's the fiddling around for change.

You could have exact fare hoppers, but that still has the big disadvantage (for the bus company) of having to handle the cash. The cost of cash-handling is a big reason why TfL got rid of cash on buses.

For me, smartcards or m-tickets give the convenience of not having to have the right change for a weekly ticket every Monday morning. The Stagecoach Smart Megarider in Newcastle just came off my debit card once a month, and it's a similar deal with the Arriva M-tickets.

 

[radamfi]

I would suggest tendering exact fare is comparable in time to using a bank card or smart card to pay for it, especially if you have to wait for a paper ticket to come out. The only time saving therefore would be in the change giving.

When you ask for a ticket, the driver has to find the fare on the ticket machine. That can take a while in itself, depending on the complexity of the fare structure. This is of course quickest in a flat fare system, but if you have flat fare then you might as well store the single fares on the smartcard and then you don't need to speak to the driver. This also partly works in a near flat fare system like Brighton, where the highest and most used fare can be stored on the smartcard, but lower fare(s) need to be paid for in cash. This is reasonably acceptable if not many people do short hops.

Without flat fare, the driver locating the fare on the ticket machine can be as tedious as the cash handling part if the route is long, there are many fare stages, and the driver has to work out which fare stage to use.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Common practice in the Manchester area used to be to state the fare, not the destination (which at fare rise time did lead to the amusing situation of there basically being a product called "40 please" that actually cost £0.45). In the Netherlands it used to be destination or number of zones you could state - so perhaps that would be encouraged.

 

[radamfi]

Common practice in the Manchester area used to be to state the fare, not the destination

I remember that.

With mobile apps, you can store multiple single fare options on a single device, meaning that if the passenger knows the fare in advance, he can show the relevant ticket to the driver. Brighton & Hove allow you to store £2.25 and £2 tickets on your device.

That's not so practical on smartcards as you would have to tell the driver which ticket you want to use.

 

[pemma]

Common practice in the Manchester area used to be to state the fare, not the destination (which at fare rise time did lead to the amusing situation of there basically being a product called "40 please" that actually cost £0.45).

That must have meant it was easy to spot the out of towners who would have asked for something like "Arndale Bus Station."

 

[Bletchleyite]

Storing single fares on a smartcard seems a clunky solution compared with just storing value.

 

[radamfi]

Storing single fares on a smartcard seems a clunky solution compared with just storing value.

In my view, what counts is the speed of boarding, with convenience for passenger in not having to carry cash a happy coincidence. Stored value cards are great as long you have touch in touch out for a variable fare system, or just touch in for flat fare.

I would actually say a paper single ticket or book of singles bought off the bus for example:

t+ ticket, or its book of 10 equivalent (carnet) in Paris
EinzelTicket or its book of 4 equivalent (4erTicket) in a typical German city
former Dutch Strippenkaart

is better than a stored value card that can only be used like a debit card to buy tickets from the driver. It is clear that there is no great rush to get rid of tickets like the t+ or carnet because they do the job as good as the smartcard equivalent.

 

[shinkansen1966]

In my view, what counts is the speed of boarding,

When travelling on buses outside London, I'm invariably surprised by the time it takes to board passengers. Watching passenger actually get money out and pay for their fare, one-by-one. It's time consuming.

Can we have a national Oyster card please ?

 

[ag51ruk]

Arriva's M-ticket system offers day tickets and passes. What we need is one offering Oyster style functionality - single tickets but with capping. Would be really easy to do.

Trent's Mango has daily, weekly and monthly fare capping and auto-top up when you get to a specified valus. But even they are now experimenting with allowing people to top up using cash on board on a couple of routes

 

[Drsatan]

I'm planning a trip to Yorkshire later this year and plan on taking the X93 bus from Whitby to Scarborough. I've emailed them to ask how much a single is, to judge whether a daysaver will be cheaper or not.

Fingers crossed...

 

[johnnychips]

Common practice in the Manchester area used to be to state the fare, not the destination (which at fare rise time did lead to the amusing situation of there basically being a product called "40 please" that actually cost £0.45).

I thought everybody did this! That's what I always do when I get the bus and so do loads of people. Of course, with First in Doncaster, the second thing I usually say is, "Bloody gone up again, has it?"

If you aren't sure of the fare, of course, you ask for 'Town please', which is accurate in Donny but everybody used to call Manchester 'town' when I lived their even though it's been a proud city for many years.

 

[radamfi]

I thought everybody did this! That's what I always do when I get the bus and so do loads of people. Of course, with First in Doncaster, the second thing I usually say is, "Bloody gone up again, has it?"

If you aren't sure of the fare, of course, you ask for 'Town please', which is accurate in Donny but everybody used to call Manchester 'town' when I lived their even though it's been a proud city for many years.

In the days before electronic ticket machines, the driver would need to calculate the fare by looking at a fare table, so if the passenger told him the fare it would save time. Nowadays, the driver has to enter the destination fare stage into the machine so it is now easier to state destination.

 

[Kuyoyo]

I'm planning a trip to Yorkshire later this year and plan on taking the X93 bus from Whitby to Scarborough. I've emailed them to ask how much a single is, to judge whether a daysaver will be cheaper or not.

Fingers crossed...

A return is £7, a Day Ticket is £7.70 (Arriva North East Daysaver)

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Oddly the company I've had most issues with is First (despite only travelling with them occasionally). I've had drivers asking me not to touch on the pad and show them the card instead and other occasions where the ticket machine crashed when I touched on it (which may explain the behaviour of the other drivers).

I don't use First as much as I used to, having moved to Arriva Country... But First in West Yorkshire are well known for having surly drivers, thought it did take them a good while to get rid of the friendliness that went with Yorkshire Rider. I've only had one issue with a duff machine on Arriva, but in that case the driver saw me approach, M-card in hand, and muttered "s'not workin'" so I just showed the counterpart card which displays the expiry date.

 

[Starmill]

If Plusbus (or some other helpfully integrated product, such as a PTE Day ticket) is unavailable, then chances are I'm not on the bus. This is one of the main reasons why!

 

[GatwickDepress]

If Plusbus (or some other helpfully integrated product, such as a PTE Day ticket) is unavailable, then chances are I'm not on the bus. This is one of the main reasons why!

Same. Even when Stagecoach finally told me the fare for a short trip (email for fares? Wouldn't it just be easier to collate a database?), the driver still tried to sell me a more expensive DayRider ticket.

 

[bb21]

The latter, which is why I'm not a fan and prefer a zonal approach.

Yes, different routes cost different amounts, you can also have the outward costing different from the return based on stop locations.

That's just a recipe for problems.

Beijing had the first review of bus fares in seven years at the beginning of 2015, where the varied charging method depending on the route type (flat-fare in the central area originally) was replaced by a distance-based system across board. Some routes on leaving the terminus would need to proceed in the wrong direction for several kilometres on a main road before heading back at the next roundabout, adding sometimes as many as six fare stages to the journey in one direction. The net result was the tripling of fares on some routes for a short journey in the opposite direction, and countless complaints, including assaults on frontline staff because it is simply ridiculous that the same journey would cost different amounts out and back, and people feel ripped off.