Why are fares treated as state secrets

[oldman]

It's many years since I came across a bus fare that was not a multiple of 10p - you can also usually work out a maximum by looking at the cost of a day ticket, but it's a pain.

SPT fares go in multiples of 5p. One route has fares of 1.25 and 1.30 and also 2.10 and 2.15.

 

[MedwayValiant]

I would be surprised if any large operators these days provide fare tables for machine failure.

Are there any operators left who still use mechanical ticket machines and paper fare charts as the norm?

I could imagine a taxi firm which holds one low value bus contract - operated with its one minibus - using taxi receipt cards as tickets.

I could also imagine a deeply rural operator whose business is 90+% ENCTS not issuing tickets at all. The driver recognises the half dozen old ladies who travel on his bus every Tuesday, and he has to guess a bit on the rare occasion when a farepaying passenger presents himself.

Even if they had them how would the drivers issue tickets, by scribbling on bits of ticket roll?

Is there actually any requirement to issue tickets? I'm old enough to remember when Newport Transport didn't. You just put your money in the farebox and took your seat, and the drivers took as little notice of the boarding process as London bus drivers do now.

 

[Busaholic]

Are there any operators left who still use mechanical ticket machines and paper fare charts as the norm?

I could imagine a taxi firm which holds one low value bus contract - operated with its one minibus - using taxi receipt cards as tickets.

I could also imagine a deeply rural operator whose business is 90+% ENCTS not issuing tickets at all. The driver recognises the half dozen old ladies who travel on his bus every Tuesday, and he has to guess a bit on the rare occasion when a farepaying passenger presents himself.



Is there actually any requirement to issue tickets? I'm old enough to remember when Newport Transport didn't. You just put your money in the farebox and took your seat, and the drivers took as little notice of the boarding process as London bus drivers do now.

I guess if that deeply rural operator chooses not to seek reimbursement from the LA for ENCTS usage, then no record needs to be kept : perhaps that operator also drives the bus himself/herself, and doesn't have to worry about the driver keeping the fares for him/herself - 'I didn't know we took cash, guvnor'. This is a COMMERCIAL service we're talking about?!

 

[SCH117X]

I would be surprised if any large operators these days provide fare tables for machine failures, even if they had them how would the drivers issue tickets, by scribbling on bits of ticket roll?

A Transdev driver did exactly that a few years back when his ticket machine had frozen up one sub zero snowy icy morning more due to the climate than any electrical or mechanical issue. The journey was enlivened by him along with another driver who had got on en-route disassembling and reassembling it. Seeing a lonely passengers waiting at a stop they declared "lets give it a go", only to be foiled by the passenger waving a pass at them!

 

[quarella]

Browsing the Crosville website I saw they do manage some fares information,http://www.crosvillemotorservices.co.uk/timetables/ However I was surprised to see that they charge for dogs, only discovered through a banner about "Free Travel for Local Dogs" on their home page. http://www.crosvillemotorservices.co.uk/news/post.php?s=free-bus-travel-for-local-dogs I thought dog tickets had disappeared by the early seventies. Any other areas charge for canine companions?
We'll get the Rover ticket out of the way now.

 

[philjo]

What do bus operators do if the ticket machine breaks down in service? Is that a reason to take the bus out of service and turf the passengers off, or does anyone who boards when the machine is not working get a free ride?

Or do drivers still have old-fashioned triangular fare tables in their bags, to which they can then resort? If it's this, it would be a simple enough task to make them into PDFs. Even if the operator doesn't want to put these onto their website, it could at least send them to anyone who asks.

I have been on a few 84 and 398 services in Potters Bar when the ticket machines were not working. Basically the driver was writing out tickets by hand making the services run very late as it took a long time at each stop.
I think they did have a laminated fare table

 

[robbob700]

I thought dog tickets had disappeared by the early seventies. Any other areas charge for canine companions?
We'll get the Rover ticket out of the way now.

Ipswich Buses charge for dogs

We charge £1 per dog for a Rover ticket – valid for travel all day (even if the dog’s name is Cyril!).

as do Trent Barton

We think dogs have been getting a ruff deal when it comes to bus fares. To stop dog owners getting hot under the dog collar we are introducing a 50p flat fare across all our buses from 6 October, meaning you and your pooch can enjoy trentbarton land together for a really good price. Come and join us on board, you know you would be barking mad not to.

 

[MedwayValiant]

Reading Buses charge not only dog fares but cat fares. I can't immediately think of any other operator which charges for a cat in a cat box, but on Reading Buses they are £1.00.

Stagecoach charge dog fares in some parts of the country and not in others. I think they've just carried on with the policy of the predecessor NBC operator in the relevant area - so for instance Lincolnshire Road Car did and so Stagecoach Lincs does, but East Kent didn't and so Stagecoach East Kent doesn't.

I guess if that deeply rural operator chooses not to seek reimbursement from the LA for ENCTS usage, then no record needs to be kept : perhaps that operator also drives the bus himself/herself, and doesn't have to worry about the driver keeping the fares for him/herself

AIUI, it is not the law that bus operators must use a smart ticketing system if they are to claim ENCTS reimbursement.

Local authorities have discretion to allow small operators (less than 150,000 route miles pa) to submit their reimbursement claims manually without the usual information generated from ticket machines. In such a case, they basically take the operator's word for it but are also expected to do surveys and mystery passenger trips.

How many operators, if any, actually do it this way because they are still using oldfangled mechanical ticket machines I do not know.

 

[SCH117X]

Whats to stoping a dodgy operator recording non existant passengers on a ticket machine? Whether the records come off the machine or manually entered their is clear scope for deception. Have to wonder when I see empty or almost empty commercially operated services.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Whats to stoping a dodgy operator recording non existant passengers on a ticket machine? Whether the records come off the machine or manually entered their is clear scope for deception. Have to wonder when I see empty or almost empty commercially operated services.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-35800717

 

[radamfi]

Even operators who publish fare tables online aren't off the hook. Those tables only give you the fare for part of a single journey. They only cover a whole single journey where there are no changes involved. You shouldn't need to look up several fare tables.

By comparison, 9292.nl gives you the price of a trip from door to door nationwide, including buses, trams, metros and trains. Journey planners giving fares for whole journeys can be found in German PTE-type areas (Verkehrsverbund).

 

[TheBusDriver]

No Charges for dogs or cats in Colchester with us, however we are at our own discretion, allowed to issue a child ticket for a dog or cat.

Depends how polite you are when boarding i guess.

 

[PeterC]

They only cover a whole single journey where there are no changes involved. You shouldn't need to look up several fare tables.

That assumes a monopoly operator. Where I live connection from a local to an interurban service ALWAYS involves a change of operator.

 

[radamfi]

That assumes a monopoly operator. Where I live connection from a local to an interurban service ALWAYS involves a change of operator.

That doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. For example, my earlier example of 9292.nl gives you the price of the full journey regardless of the number of changes and works regardless which combination of companies and modes you use.

 

[ag51ruk]

Are there any operators left who still use mechanical ticket machines and paper fare charts as the norm?

Routemaster Buses in Crewe have started to run some additional services where they are using Setright machines, so must have fare tables to go with those

 

[RT4038]

That doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. For example, my earlier example of 9292.nl gives you the price of the full journey regardless of the number of changes and works regardless which combination of companies and modes you use.

I think that a national database for travel times and fares is a real necessity. Anything less is pretty useless, except to enthusiasts. However, the title of this thread was asking why fares are 'state secrets' and I think much of that has been explained? As has been pointed out, intending passengers want to be able to make rational decisions for their journey, both multi-operator and multi-modal, and this will take into account both journey time, number of changes and fares. You give the example of a website in the Netherlands that can do this, but I believe that country has a much simpler 'zonal' type fare structure than is the case here. For better or for worse, the UK generally has a much finer fare structure, based on stages along individual routes; a plethora of area tickets, some single operator, some multi, and some a mixture. There has never been any kind of national bus fare structure. Interfacing this complex fares system with travel times is proving to be extremely difficult, particularly as there is not an unlimited pot of money available for development. All sorts of other issues too. I expect it will come eventually though.
Interestingly, in Germany, the DB website is unable to interface 'Tarifverbund' fares with their own, and that country's fare structures are much much simpler than ours!

 

[radamfi]

You give the example of a website in the Netherlands that can do this, but I believe that country has a much simpler 'zonal' type fare structure than is the case here. For better or for worse, the UK generally has a much finer fare structure, based on stages along individual routes; a plethora of area tickets, some single operator, some multi, and some a mixture. There has never been any kind of national bus fare structure.

Actually, the Netherlands have largely abandoned their zonal system in favour of price per km. There are still zonal systems in a few urban areas but they apply to season tickets only. So to calculate the fare they need to know the fare on each leg on the journey. So that is no different to the UK. The system has to know the fare between each pair of stops on each individual route. That is actually a finer grained fare structure than the UK which is mostly stage based.

 

[WestCoast]

Depends where you are in the UK. In some areas you have no idea but the West Midlands is easy - all the operators follow exactly what NXWM determines the fare should be :roll:

 

[Tom B]

Some time ago a local operator in the South Yorkshire region had an intriguing attitude to tickets. It seemed that the ticket machines were perennially defective and passengers would be told they had broken down and they'd just have to give the driver the cash. They always worked perfectly when the route was being checked by an Inspector, however! Some drivers got very uppity if you asked for a ticket, and would begrudgingly print you one. Others would give passengers a choice - it'd be £1.50 for a single to town if you wanted a ticket, but £1 if you were happy without one.

Unsurprisingly, the company went bankrupt!

Transport for London has issued an edict requiring buses without functioning ticket machines to be immediately taken out of service. I can see that coming back and biting them on the ... if it happens too often, particularly if it seems to happen with certain operators, routes and individual drivers rather more than with others.

I don't know how recent this is, but I probably get on a bus 2-3 times per month without a functioning ticket machine. Some of the time this is because I often board at the first stop and the driver has not yet set the machine up. The drivers and operators presumably do not care as it is TfL not them which loses the revenue. Do the operators get charged anything when machines break down in lieu of the revenue that TfL loses?

Surely a better stipulation would be to state that the bus must be swapped with a functioning one next time it passes the garage or other relief point i.e. avoiding a bus being taken out of service.
Again, it appears that the attitude of *some* London operators, is to jump on any issue to pull a bus out of service rather than swap it over. I was once thrown off a bus at the stop opposite a garage because it had gone mechanical, which could have been avoided if somebody had arranged for another bus to be brought out and passengers transferred.

As to the different operators - First Mainline seemed to have emergency tickets as I was issued with one a couple of times including a "day saver" scrawled out in biro! LRT's policy seemed to be that if you are wanting a single ticket you must put the money in the vault, but if you want a day-saver you travel without putting money in and are told to purchase it on the next bus.

Whats to stoping a dodgy operator recording non existant passengers on a ticket machine? Whether the records come off the machine or manually entered their is clear scope for deception. Have to wonder when I see empty or almost empty commercially operated services.

On the opposite side of the coin, First Mainline modified the OAP pass button to record rather than print a ticket when the free travel was introduced. However, they presumably had issues with under-recording which were causing them to lose out on revenue, as they were soon replaced with a zero-fare ticket which the OAPs were told to expect - what a waste of paper.

 

[radamfi]

The need for sophisticated ticket machines that need to be in fully working order at all times is a consequence of having an unnecessarily complicated fare system. In the Netherlands, obviously most passengers use smartcards, but if you want to buy a ticket on the bus, the driver simply hands you a piece of card and stamps it. No need for ticket rolls and printing.

 

[Busaholic]

I think any bus which develops an issue with ticketing en route should proceed with its passengers to its normal terminus, and then be taken out of service. In an ideal world there would be another bus waiting to sub there. Nobody should be thrown off a bus because the ticket machines aren't working imo. At a terminus, and assuming there was another bus on stand or waiting to go on stand, then asking passengers to use the bus behind should be acceptable, given most TfL services operate at 4 bph or better.

 

[SCH117X]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-35800717

Further press report with more detailshttp://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/how-padarn-bus-directors-conjured-11090655

 

[brompton rail]

in South Yorkshire


On the opposite side of the coin, First Mainline modified the OAP pass button to record rather than print a ticket when the free travel was introduced. However, they presumably had issues with under-recording which were causing them to lose out on revenue, as they were soon replaced with a zero-fare ticket which the OAPs were told to expect - what a waste of paper.

First SY stopped issuing tickets for pass holders some time ago, but then re- introduced Zero Fare tickets (which were useful as they included the scheduled departure time - handy as our service frequently runs seriously late!). Then tickets were withdrawn again and this continues at the present time.

Many other operators do not issue Zero Fare tickets, including Trent Barton.