Bus prices: We're being taken for a ride (From Worcester News)
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Bus prices: We're being taken for a ride
7:10am Monday 9th March 2009 in News
EXPENSIVE: Our bus ticket prices are among the highest in the country. 10162802
SKY-HIGH bus fares in the Worcester area have been slammed by council leaders as among the most expensive in the country.
Guildhall bosses have launched a stinging attack on local bus company First, which hiked local fares by up to 10 per cent last summer when petrol prices soared – but have refused to reduce them as oil prices return to previous levels.
A First spokesman has told your Worcester News it has no plans to lower fares, insisting prices are no more expensive than elsewhere and claiming passengers are “more interested in punctuality than fares”. But Worcester City Council leader Simon Geraghty insists prices should come down. “Fares here are actually some of the highest per mile in the country,” he told a cabinet meeting.
“We were not disagreed with when we made that point to First. We all accept fuel went up, but it has come back down and prices haven’t reflected that.”
Single journeys within Worcester city currently cost £1.20 or £1.80. Return bus journeys to any nearby town cost £5.50.
By contrast, a day return by train costs £3.50 to Pershore, £4 to Bromsgrove and £4.50 to Malvern. Labour councillor Roger Berry told a full council meeting: “We pay the highest fares in the West Midlands – and probably western Europe, per mile travelled.
“The time has come to challenge First on their pricing policies – one cannot help thinking they’re taking us for a ride.
“Charges in Redditch are lower, because we don’t have the competition in Worcester to match what they have in Redditch. It seems to me we’re not getting a fair deal.
“Charges are astronomical in Worcester.”
The cost of bus travel is a key issue for city council bosses due to the Government’s concessionary travel scheme, under which the city council has to pay First each time an elderly person makes a free bus journey starting in Worcester.
This means every fare hike is a major drain on already-depleted Guildhall coffers.
“It’s all money we would want to be ploughing back into services,” Coun Geraghty said. “Just as importantly, we are supposed to be encouraging people to get out of their cars and on to the buses.”
The city’s head of finance Grahame Lucas has asked local transport authority Worcestershire County Council to take the issue up with First.
A spokesperson for the county council said it was working with First to improve services, and said: “Part of this process will be a review of the fares and ticketing system in Worcester, to identify ways of enhancing and modernising systems to make bus travel more attractive.”
However, Steve Zancker, First’s commercial director, told your Worcester News local fare prices were not unreasonable.
“I would say the fares we charge in Worcester are not dissimilar to other fares elsewhere,” he said. “I don’t have any exact fare-per-mile information and I don’t know what that claim is based on.”
Mr Zancker said prices would not drop this year, as First buys its fuel a year in advance, and so “does not pay the price you see at the pump”.
He said: “The cost of diesel went up probably 30 per cent last year, but we didn’t put fares up by 30 per cent.”
He insisted last year’s fare rises were in line with the industry, but said the company was revising its plans to put fares up by another five per cent this year “in light of the economic situation”.
Comments(20)
skychip
says...
8:42am Mon 9 Mar 09
robe.rtm.29
says...
9:12am Mon 9 Mar 09
rcro
says...
11:03am Mon 9 Mar 09
"Return bus journeys to any nearby town cost £5.50."
Although still not cheap, Worcester-Malvern return is £4.40 NOT £5.50 and a Worcester-Bromyard return is a relative bargain at £3.85, both using First's buses.
The city bus fares in Worcester are among the most expensive in the country but that has been the case for the last 40 years or so. Interesting that the council have only just noticed.
BAC
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12:04pm Mon 9 Mar 09
Baldrick2708
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2:13pm Mon 9 Mar 09
jovialcommonsense
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6:19pm Mon 9 Mar 09
big fish
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6:26pm Mon 9 Mar 09
Flagman
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7:13pm Mon 9 Mar 09
val worcestershire
says...
1:13am Tue 10 Mar 09
The Government is always saying we should use public transport more and leave the car at home. What a joke with the cost of fares and a joke of a timetable. Friday is the worst day of the week for lateness. I do not drive as I cannot afford a car so I therefore have no choice but to use the buses.
If I did not live so far away I would walk as it would be much quicker!!
In contrast, the park and ride bus service to Perdiswell is on time, very clean and VERY pleasant drivers not grumpy like a lot of the First drivers who need to learn how to treat the passengers (public relations) . After all it is we who pay their wages! and boy do we pay for it.
Perhaps if fares came down a lot more of us would use the buses, especially if they ran to timetable. During school holidays and weekends I try to avoid, as much as possible, taking the children into Worcester as it is so costly to get there, before you even go to a shop.
val worcestershire
says...
1:14am Tue 10 Mar 09
The Government is always saying we should use public transport more and leave the car at home. What a joke with the cost of fares and a joke of a timetable. Friday is the worst day of the week for lateness. I do not drive as I cannot afford a car so I therefore have no choice but to use the buses.
If I did not live so far away I would walk as it would be much quicker!!
In contrast, the park and ride bus service to Perdiswell is on time, very clean and VERY pleasant drivers not grumpy like a lot of the First drivers who need to learn how to treat the passengers (public relations) . After all it is we who pay their wages! and boy do we pay for it.
Perhaps if fares came down a lot more of us would use the buses, especially if they ran to timetable. During school holidays and weekends I try to avoid, as much as possible, taking the children into Worcester as it is so costly to get there, before you even go to a shop.
TmP
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7:10am Tue 10 Mar 09
Horatio One
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7:31am Tue 10 Mar 09
varien
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11:15am Tue 10 Mar 09
Well Val, blame your fellow passengers for this - most likely to be under eighteens who are responsible
robe.rtm.29
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3:47pm Tue 10 Mar 09
you could take a leaf out of the dolms drivers here they look after there own bus example putting plastic bags for passengers to put there litter and after each journey go around and chek there is nothing left to dirty anyone sitting down before starting another journey
but this would be to much trouble for worcester drivers they are to much of ahurry to get a smoke or chat up female s
traveloptimist
says...
5:59pm Tue 10 Mar 09
We desperately need to attract different bus operators to Worcester to create competition and drive down fares. The only way to do this is to make the network more attractive to competition. This means investment: in bus priority schemes, high quality bus stops and bus shelters, better information, new vehicles, cross-city services and more park and ride sites to generate the demand to ensure bus services are profitable (so the fares don't rise so much!). The City and County Councils, if they work together, can deliver this. Come on Councillors - give us a bus network that this city can be proud of: think big!
Logik
says...
8:34pm Tue 10 Mar 09
traveloptimist wrote:Please note that Traveloptomist is a Transport planner in a neighbouring county and therefore he has a vested interest in keeping his ilk in employment to dream up these nutty ideas.
I think the Councillors et al have known about this for a very long time. Worcester's public transport system has serious problems, but you can't force the hand of our incumbent greedy Scottish public transport operator: First Group. You only need to look elsewhere to see what those Scottish transport vultures have done to slowly destroy public transport networks elsewhere (First Great Western, Bristol, the Potteries, Plymouth, Leeds/Bradford, Leicester etc etc) Just looking round on the web, it is clear that First's main aim is to maximise profits to return to its shareholders and manage decline.
We desperately need to attract different bus operators to Worcester to create competition and drive down fares. The only way to do this is to make the network more attractive to competition. This means investment: in bus priority schemes, high quality bus stops and bus shelters, better information, new vehicles, cross-city services and more park and ride sites to generate the demand to ensure bus services are profitable (so the fares don't rise so much!). The City and County Councils, if they work together, can deliver this. Come on Councillors - give us a bus network that this city can be proud of: think big!
Get real, nobody wants buses any more.
traveloptimist
says...
10:00am Wed 11 Mar 09
Your blythe assertion that 'nobody' wants buses any more is patently wrong. There is still just under 30% of the UK that do not own or have access to a car, and we have an ageing population, who are all entitled to free bus travel. Suffice to say, demand for travel by bus is on the up.
You get real! The people of Worcester deserve a decent and realistic choice of travel modes.
Logik
says...
5:23pm Wed 11 Mar 09
Perhaps when 'your ilk' (no offence) provide what is so obviously needed then my opinions of aforesaid ilk might improve.
Whilst there may be a demand from the pensioners with their free bus passes, the transport is by no means free. It is all funded from taxes and council subsidies is it not. And why is it that most times I see a bus they are all virtually empty. Buses need lots of fare paying passengers to survive and as far as I can see they just do not exist and nor will they.
The more bus priority schemes there are, the less space there will be for motorists, the more jams it will cause and the buses will still be virtually empty.
And yes, I am quite aware that you plan for the likes of me as well and what a hash of it is made in my humble opinion. Chicanes, dots in roads as roundabouts at small T junctions, what a joke. I could go on but what's the point, you never listen and that's the problem.
economist
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9:17am Thu 12 Mar 09
em miles says...
7:52am Mon 9 Mar 09