This is undoubtedly true, but this also means that offering a wide area ticket would not actually cost the funding authorities/bus companies much revenue (provided the price was pitched at that 4/5 journeys level), but may well generate some. Unless of course there is no capacity to convey the extra, but my experience of buses around my local area is that passenger generation would have to be at a heroic level before that becomes a problem!
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Cross Boundary Tickets
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TheGrandWazoo
Veteran Member
It's one of the great paradoxs. The relatively few people who would make 7/8 journeys (and I'd be one of them) are so few that a wider ticket that costs £13/£14 (like an Explorer NE) is probably not a concern to operators. The more localised ticket (perhaps zonally) at a lower £9/10 probably makes more sense if it grows the market.
It really is quite bizarre how the PTEs are rigid in their boundaries. West Midlands nbus scheme is all operator and whilst it does allow travel from Pattingham/Perton (in the South Staffs enclave), it is otherwise very much along the border lines so places like Lichfield or Cannock or Bromsgrove - nope!
Because the nbus scheme pays far too little per ticket for longer distance journeys, and routes with mostly long distance journeys being made would render such services uneconomic. Particularly with some nbus products (such as scholar/students fares). As you know, someone has got to pay. In the WMCA area, densely populated and lots of people making short distance journeys, the passengers can and do cross subsidise each other, but this simply does not work outside in the shire county areas. Quite possibly the other bus companies/local authorities would accept the nbus area being extended further out, but likely only on the basis of their existing revenue [incl. Govt. fare cap]being guaranteed, and a cost covering formula for any new mileage that has to be operated as a result (particularly an issue for non-entitled school movements to private/grammar schools cross boundary). The funding implications are quite complex.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
I suppose the basic issue is, as always, funding. PTE tickets are, to a greater or lesser extent, subsidised by the PTEs themselves. So why would they extend the benefits to areas which are outside the PTE area and which don't contribute to PTE coffers?
The few exceptions to this are all where it is beneficial for the PTEs to collaborate, such as West Yorkshire tickets being valid to Darton in South Yorkshire and the Merseytravel Saveaway being valid on Merseyrail south of Hooton. Or where the PTE is effectively the operator, such as GM tickets being valid on all Bee Network buses even outside of area.
There's a bit more flexibility where some or all of the PTE ticketing is managed by an arms-length company. Network One in the North East are able to use their position to administer the NE Explorer and, IIRC, System One in GM are able to do the same for the GM Wayfarer.
I imagine that the other issue is with competition law, which makes it more difficult for operators to collaborate on joint ticketing; there's a fine line between a collaboration and a cartel. You need a third party to manage it, and some councils are supportive (e.g. Intalink in Hertfordshire) but most are not.
The Crosville Wanderbus was indeed a splendid ticket - I bought them numerous times back in the day.
They weren’t officially valid in ‘Merseyside’ but most drivers turned a blind eye, or were oblivious to the validity when travelling between Birkenhead Woodside and Hooton Cross Roads!
TheGrandWazoo
Veteran Member
I guess the issue is that for folks like @Deerfold, they are West Yorks residents who would benefit if cross border acceptance included Keighley to Burnley (or even just Colne) or Skipton. However, fully accept that it is difficult to justify much further than this e.g. Scarborough, Ripon etc.
I think that was why Network One was created to get around issues of competition law. Herts is one authority that has brokered deals and I think the predecessors to WECA (e.g. Bath, and soon North Somerset) also intervened in certain cases.
Again, some more anomalous boundary details... If you buy an AvonRider in the former Avon county area, you are able to travel to Wiltshire on Faresaver or First buses (i.e. Chippenham, Melksham, Westbury) but not into Somerset or Gloucestershire. Also, it would seem that you can't go into Wiltshire on other operators.
Dwarfer1979
Member
Chicken & egg. I would as much say that TfL (& LT before) being fairly anti other operators (there were several attempts, Docklands Transit was the best resourced & most high profile and that foundered on not being able to accept LT tickets or receive funding for doing so) means that they have withered and or never appeared than it being not needed as the services didn't or wouldn't exist if they were open to it. Leaving aside Kingston, which like Uxbridge is close enough to the boundary that the lack of local income is less decisive, the cross boundary non-TfL services have heavily died off, even Croydon sees a magnitude less from the early 90's before all the TfL discounting & other improvements kicked in.
I would suggest that if TfGM excluded a route like the 199 from local ticketing schemes like London have chosen to do you would see the service cut back fairly significantly within Manchester as without the local traffic within GM it couldn't support that level of service - as has happened with cross boundary services into places like Sutton, Croydon & Romford. TfGM fund the £2 fare reduction as part of their ticketing system including all operators even those not in the Bee Network as I mentioned, it only applies within Greater Manchester not from New Mills which is in Derbyshire on High Peak services (the Bee Network buses may do so but they follow a different route to the High Peak ones until inside GM so it is not directly competitive).
Don't know how it's organised but Wayfarer's not a System One ticket. The web pages for it are hosted directly by TfGM so best guess is that they manage it directly.
System One's area does go beyond the Greater Manchester boundary. This is no doubt related to the fact that the PTE had responsibility for various bus and train services in part of the High Peak. As an aside, I was looking at Companies House and System One doesn't seem to have had any reorganisation since the introduction of the Bee Network. One of its directors remains a representative from Arriva for example.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
The boundary in that part of Derbyshire and Cheshire is very blurred. The £2 single cap doesn't necessarily apply; where it doesn't, the £3 cap does apply. The £5 Bee Bus ticket isn't valid outside Greater Manchester except on Bee Network buses.
But TfGM do have a specific bus ticket- the Bee AnyBus- which also costs £5 and is valid beyond the boundaries of Greater Manchester. The Bee AnyBus is valid as far as Glossop, Hayfield, New Mills, and Poynton to the south-east, as far as Wilmslow to the south-west, as far as Lymm to the west, and as far as Bacup to the north-east.
Greater Manchester boundary and AnyBus ticket boundary
Greater Manchester boundary and AnyBus ticket boundary
The 199 as it runs now is really based on the non-GM market anyway. The evening Airport-Stockport short workings, which were supported by TfGM, went with franchising.
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Interesting, the way it looked made it appear like a System One ticket, as all the other one day tickets are System One. But as you note, its not listed on their website, just the TfGM one.
I imagine that System One will be gone very shortly anyway.
Bee Network fares apply on the 358 Bee Network service within Derbyshire. As you say they don't fund High Peak's decision to match them in the county. High Peak's 61 follows the same route as the the 358 between New Mills and Hayfield, and the 60 follows a similar but slightly different route. But High Peak match the £2 single fare offered by Bee Network.
A 199 without its Greater Manchester leg would likely be a very pale shadow of what it is now - I'm assuming the airport section more than justifies itself financially. Most likely it would be cut back at New Mills. That would cause problems as between New Mills and Hazel Grove it is the only bus route on the A6 and would leave High Lane (Greater Manchester) and Disley (a very isolated outpost of Cheshire East) without a bus service. TfGM would likely have to end up introducing its own Stockport to New Mills route via the A6. But why bother when High Peak can do it for you?
Statto
Established Member
Yeah, the PTEs are very rigid in there boundaries, a few have tickets that allow travel into neighboring areas like GM Wayfarer, but very few have tickets that don't allow such travel
Merseyside has quite a few Towns near the boundary were Merseytravel tickets are not valid on the bus, but Halton Council & the other Councils are not interested in funding Merseytravel which would allow Merseytravel tickets to be extended to other Council areas, the anonymity is, you can travel to Ellesmere Port, Chester, & Ormskirk on Merseyrail using Merseytravel issued tickets.
TheSel
Member
I was always of the understanding that they weren't valid for journeys entirely within Merseyside. Certainly I was never refused one when boarding the 0748 C1 Woodside - Chester, or the 0735 C22 ex West Kirby, my usual 'starts' for such days out, as I then lived near the railway station in Meols. Come to think of it, I once bought one on at Liverpool Mann Island on the 0705 H21 Liverpool - Widnes - Runcorn - Chester.
But no matter - they were excellent value tickets. Cheshire, Flintshire, Denbighshire, Gwynedd, Ceredigion - even into Greater Manchester, Staffordshire and Shropshire - it seemed the world was your oyster. Long before the Oyster, naturally!
Hertfordshire had some sort of deal with Arriva's Explorer ticket. They mandated its use on contracted services and encouraged all operators to use it. Arriva continue to use it in surrounding counties and so did some other companies like Carousel (I had a weekly version a few years ago when I was staying in Stokenchurch, but many local Arriva drivers refused to accept the Explorer ticket issued by other companies despite that not being the rules for the ticket). I'm assuming payments dropped as many companies stopped accepting them outside Herts and Arriva introduced a new Arriva-only ticket range. Herts has moved to a new ticket range, valid in parts or all of the county, but not the surrounding ones.
When I lived in Hitchin, we used an Explorer to Slough, via Watford and Beaconsfield and then home from Potters Bar as well as many shorter journeys via Luton and St Albans or Welwyn.
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Don't all the PTEs have these companies? West and South Yorkshire and Greater Manchester certainly do.
Just to add Greater Manchester Travelcard Ltd isn't owned by TfGM. They own some shares in it but the biggest shareholder is Stagecoach (they hold 25-50% of the shares). You can see the most recently published shareholding on Companies House.
(My assumption on the shareholding is that the shares are based on the number of services operated in Greater Manchester pre Bee Network. Hence Stagecoach is the biggest shareholder, Go North West the second, Diamond the third, and so on.)
markymark2000
On Moderation
The 22 will be under a permit anyway and not franchised.
Fully agree. I think you only have to look at TFLs refusal to accept other multi operator tickets for the routes that they operate over the borders. And similarly TFL seemingly not attempting to open up anything for the cross border bus operators to accept any ticket (Even if just the paper bus+tram ticket).
What is most annoying and stupid is the refusal to cover any part of Merseyside on both Wayfarer and SystemOne. The Wayfarer is only valid to Newton Le Willows on the train but not by bus, and the System 1 zone ends at the border which is less than 1 mile away from the interchange. Amending the zone to cover Newton Le Willows would make a huge difference as not only then is there an overlap between Merseytravel and Manchester tickets (so people aren't having to buy a bridging ticket over the border), but also Newton Le Willows is an interchange for other buses and for a long time has been the train station for Golborne (Which is of course in Manchester). A tiny extension to System One and Wayfarer bus would enable far better interchange opportunities.
The other stupid one on the Wayfarer was that because the border near Northwich/Knutsford doesn't cover Mere or Northwich Road in Knutsford, Warringtons Own buses refused to accept it on the 47 (Warrington - Knutsford), and D&G apparently don't accept it on the 89 (Northwich-Knutsford). Tiny extensions in the grand scheme of things, but silly borders meant that you were crossing out of the boundary for all of a stop or two rather than applying common sense to the borders.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
I actually don't know, I certainly wasn't aware that WY Metro had such a company (I thought the MCard was administered by WYPTE itself, but I am likely to be wrong.)
It's the same with Network Ticketing Limited in the north east.
I do wonder how much longer the separate company will last, given franchising and given TfGM's desire to have PAYG on trains. I can well see it coming back in-house, as with TfL.
markymark2000
On Moderation
That will be because 'the other Councils' do not have the money to fund Merseytravel and its fare products.
It is not an anomaly from the operators point of view - if Merseytravel want to fund their fares being available outside of their area (on a fully funded basis, i.e. the bus company revenue being no less than it is now), then I am sure the bus companies would co-operate with this. However Merseytravel would probably have a problem (a) in funding it and (b) justifying using their area tax funds to subsidise out of area services. Merseyrail is not funded in the same way that bus services are.
This is precisely the problem. The big city areas, with dense, large populations, can afford cheap fares in general - cheap scholars and student tickets, hoppa/capped fares, cheap day/period tickets, because the average passenger travel distance is low, larger and more concentrated deprivation demographic, scholar and student travel less concentrated and the load factor on buses is high. This cannot be replicated in the surrounding shire county areas - the travel distances are longer, the demographic is completely different and less inclined to use buses, load factors much lower, and what demand there is tends to want to travel on the same bus at once (i.e. schoolchildren). The shire county areas cannot afford to fund cheap fares and cheap travel products (especially if they would likely result in additional subsidised capacity being required), and the Metropolitan counties/combined Authorities would have a hard time justifying spending their money on areas that don't (and can't afford to) contribute to PTE coffers.
I think an arms-length company is merely a vehicle in which to administer joint ticketing, in order to show transparency. As you point out, there is a fine line between collaboration and cartel. But the real problem is who is going to fund it? It is all very well coming up with joint ticketing ideas for the convenience of the passengers - however the convenience is slight, the main impetus is to make the passenger's journeys cheaper. This implies that the bus companies are going to get less revenue than they do now, with no reduction in their costs. With the wage bill, the fuel bill, the materials bill, the insurance bill, the financiers costs etc staring the Management in the face and needing to be paid, there is no way that they are going to agree anything but an expensive ticket that virtually nobody will buy, unless their present level of revenue of each individual participant company is somehow underwritten.
At this point the misty eyed will mention generated passengers by cheaper fares - but that is all risk : on day one the existing passengers will pay less, the bus companies will receive less and maybe in five years time they may get the same money. No thank you will be heard resounding from the rooftops.
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Renown 3B3RA
Member
As so often the case, it could depend on driver interpretation. I was once told in no uncertain terms that my Wanderbus ticket was not valid beyond White Barn Rd, in Alderley Edge, the southern extremity and border for the GMPTE ticketing area, as opposed to the GM county boundary, on a journey on the E29/E30 from Macclesfield to Cheadle. Which was slightly ridiculous as I’d purchased it earlier in the day on a Crosville bus in Wilmslow. Strictly speaking, perhaps it wasn’t valid in the GMPTE area but it usually seemed to be these “jobsworth“ drivers who were the most insistent.I was always of the understanding that they weren't valid for journeys entirely within Merseyside. Certainly I was never refused one when boarding the 0748 C1 Woodside - Chester, or the 0735 C22 ex West Kirby, my usual 'starts' for such days out, as I then lived near the railway station in Meols. Come to think of it, I once bought one on at Liverpool Mann Island on the 0705 H21 Liverpool - Widnes - Runcorn - Chester.
But no matter - they were excellent value tickets. Cheshire, Flintshire, Denbighshire, Gwynedd, Ceredigion - even into Greater Manchester, Staffordshire and Shropshire - it seemed the world was your oyster. Long before the Oyster, naturally!
Statto
Established Member
There is one situation passengers going between St Helens - Earlestown & Newton Le Willows were both train (although the train doesn't have a stop in Cheshire on that route) & bus crosses the County boundary from Merseyside into Cheshire then back into Merseyside, but passengers are allowed to travel through using Merseytravel tickets, & one of the routes (39) goes through Burtonwood, Warrington, but passengers are still allowed to use Merseytravel tickets to travel through.
markymark2000
On Moderation
I wish Merseytravel gave more details for cross border bus journeys on their bus and multi modal tickets.
TheGrandWazoo
Veteran Member
As you well know, it depends how much of a revenue loss operators will incur. The DevonDay ticket is a case in point. Stagecoach accept it across to Saltash and to Bude as they are fairly small projections across the border; also valid to Taunton but loadings are so low, it's probably immaterial. Go Ahead are more limited and naturally they exclude some fairly lengthy trips e.g. Plymouth to Torpoint and Rame, Callington etc. First don't accept it at all as their routes only just sneak into Devon so they'd lose out.
For somewhere like Merseyside, it is unfortunate that there isn't a small buffer zone of acceptance e.g. Ellesmere Port, Ormskirk etc but you can understand the historic reasons why. Of course, some will always want a ticket that allows them to travel on countless buses etc for the price of two Costa Coffees. Another paradox is that in somewhere like Devon, ridership is inherently lower and any disbenefit to operators is lower. If it was as important and potentially popular as some people think, then the impact of even a small extension is magnified.
Drivers are people. Some are jobsworths, some make genuine mistakes. It can be a training issue or simply that they sell or see them so rarely that they are unfamiliar with them.
I've had three in the last year. Me asking a Diamond driver for a Worcestershire Connecta ticket - had never issued one before and had to search the ticket machine. Same with a Stagecoach Devon driver and a DevonDay ticket. Then a Flagfinders driver who insisted I pay (I was certain by Travel Essex Saver was valid but he was a total tool) whilst the next driver (Chambers - Sudbury to Colchester) only grudingly accepted it after I gently explained and showed him the website!
On the Solo ticket, it is sadly pretty unequivocal
More sadly is that they do give details about other tickets...but they are in the respective terms and conditions for each ticket. Wordy, slightly buried - not exactly consumer friendly
Exactly this. If my home County had a multi operator day ticket I am sure that the same sort of cross boundary arrangements would apply, to the traffic objectives just over the boundary. The price of the ticket would obviously reflect that. However, 90%+ of the scheduled mileage in my home county is run by one operator, who does not have ticketing equipment that can accurately record ticket use. The operators are not much interested in participating, either because it would be another obscure ticket for their staff to issue and recognise and/or because they fear there will not be a fair share out of the revenue. When the main operator replaces their ticketing equipment then the matter can be revisited. In the meantime, it is an issue for only a small number of people.
However, what is extremely unlikely is that the neighbouring PTE ticket products will be extended into the neighbouring shire counties (one of which is my home county) in the current circumstances. I don't think this happens anywhere else either. Yes, there are some small exceptions in my home county, all relating to historical situations (at least one to the original tramway system that had one line extending way over the boundary), but these have all been assimilated into the budgets of both operators and Local Authorities years and years ago, and are not contentious now.
adam rogan
Member
Halton is perhaps the most disadvantaged in the Liverpool City Region. It had its distinctive bus shelters and flags painted over or swapped for counterfeit merseytravel ones showing the tight fistedness of the LCR instead of replacing them but has no acceptance of Metro Card passes. I know this is a funding issue but I see no value in it paying for the mayor but having none of the benefits. At least TFGM has some outlying areas such as Glossop which are fully integrated into their bus and rail network.
I wasn't aware of that - I had previously assumed validity ended at the boundary of the Durham County Council area. But that makes it far more useful for people in (for instance) Barnard Castle where they have one bus every two hours to the rest of County Durham but two buses (plus occasional extras) per hour into Darlington. Are there stipulations as to which routes you can use it on?
One annoyance (as a north east resident) is that clearly a fair amount of money has been spent to make the TNE day tickets work on all operators' systems - you can buy a ticket on the Go North East app but use it on an Arriva bus as a scan ticket. The same doesn't seem to really happen with the Explorer - when I bought it in the GNE app I found it scanned fine on Arriva routes just across the border (such as the X66 in Darlington or the 7 between Stockton and Yarm) but flagged up as invalid in places like Redcar, Saltburn, and Whitby. The drivers generally let me on after a little suspicion (I can't imagine they see the Go North East app much down there!), but I wish it was totally frictionless... the way the TNE tickets work is the gold standard and as I say, it's odd that the Explorer scanned fine in one part of the Tees Valley but not another.
Mark L
Member
But what about crossing the boundary into Scotland or Wales? (or more importantly back again).With regards to cross boundary bus tickets just wait untill you get to the appropriate age and get an ENTCS card.
All Halton has to do is pay its fair share, like everybody else.
JKP
Member
ENCTS cards work perfectly well crossing back into Northumberland on Borders Buses 67 from Kelso, Scotland.
Exactly. The residents of the constituent Metropolitan Boroughs of Merseytravel will be paying the Merseytravel precept in their Council Tax. I presume Halton residents won't be, hence not getting Merseytravel benefits.
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