Eye-Watering Fare Rises on Arriva Midlands

[bb21]

This is happening on 3rd January, merely a few months after the previous round of fare rises. Selected prices:

• Leicester City+ Zone Day Saver: £3.60 to £4, 11.1%
• Midlands Day Saver: £5.20 to £6, 15.3%
• Midlands Weekly: £21 to £25, 19%
• Midlands 4-Weekly: £50 to £55, 10% (This was £45 a few months back, so 22.2% increase (!) in less than a year, although a 10% discount has always been, and still will be, available for purchases from the Arriva website.)
• Midlands Annual Saver: £490 to £590, 20.4%
• Flexi Day Saver: £4 to £5, 25% (This ticket, however, is a local authority inter-available product and has not increased in price since 2004 so the increase is understandable. It is pretty good value and has effectively been acting as a cap for operator-specific fares.)

Most other fares are going up by around 10%.

On the same day First Leicester Citybus is also raising most of its fares by approximately 10%.

I bet Leicester is not the only place hit hard.

 

[Badger]

National Express West Midlands are also increasing fares, although this is only by 10p on most tickets (definately a far stretch from 20.4%).

NX:WM price changes 1st January 2012:

Birmingham City Hop - NEW £1.00 // new fare for travel within the BHM ringroad
Adult Short Hop £1.60 => £1.70
Adult Single £1.80 => £1.90
Adult Daysaver £3.60 => £3.80
Family Daysaver £7.80 => £8.00
All Travelcards increase by 50p per week (regional 4 week goes from £52 to £54 per month)

I think, relatively, we have it quite good here compared to the above.

 

[SS4]

National Express West Midlands are also increasing fares, although this is only by 10p on most tickets (definately a far stretch from 20.4%).

NX:WM price changes 1st January 2012:

Birmingham City Hop - NEW £1.00 // new fare for travel within the BHM ringroad
Adult Short Hop £1.60 => £1.70
Adult Single £1.80 => £1.90
Adult Daysaver £3.60 => £3.80
Family Daysaver £7.80 => £8.00
All Travelcards increase by 50p per week (regional 4 week goes from £52 to £54 per month)

I think, relatively, we have it quite good here compared to the above.

I agree, it could be a lot worse.

A one-day nbus ticket will rise to £4
Single fares on arriva and diamond is £1.70 (this is find hard to believe as it would be a -5.55% rise).
Diamond (presumably all colours) and Arriva will no longer accept NXWM tickets at all (previously one could pay a supplement)

nb: I could only find a free hosting website for these figures - the NWM site has no updates but they seem about right: http://www.freewebs.com/publictransportwm/fares.htm

 

[Polarbear]

Around here, (Chester), both Arriva & First are putting up fares by around 8-10% in January. First Chester & Wirral haven't increased fares for 16 months but Arriva have adjusted their prices a few times over the last 12 months.

 

[bb21]

Single fares on arriva and diamond is £1.70

Single fares to the edge of town around here is already £2.30 with Arriva, for a much much smaller distance. This is again expected to go up to £2.40 or £2.50 depending on how they feel like it.

Leicester used to be so much cheaper travelwise compared to other areas in the Midlands. Now it is probably one of the most expensive.

 

[ivanhoe]

Are Arriva in trouble or are they making the most of their monopoly situation ? These rises are not sustainable .

 

[BuhSnarf]

I have bought the monthly Midland ticket for the past year in Leicester.

Would not mind paying that if the service was not so shoddy. On the 50 route I can guarantee either my bus to or from work will be over 10 late or not arriving.

And when you complain? Bugger all.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[MCW]

This is happening on 3rd January, merely a few months after the previous round of fare rises. Selected prices:

• Leicester City+ Zone Day Saver: £3.60 to £4, 11.1%
• Midlands Day Saver: £5.20 to £6, 15.3%
• Midlands Weekly: £21 to £25, 19%
• Midlands 4-Weekly: £50 to £55, 10% (This was £45 a few months back, so 22.2% increase (!) in less than a year, although a 10% discount has always been, and still will be, available for purchases from the Arriva website.)
• Midlands Annual Saver: £490 to £590, 20.4%
• Flexi Day Saver: £4 to £5, 25% (This ticket, however, is a local authority inter-available product and has not increased in price since 2004 so the increase is understandable. It is pretty good value and has effectively been acting as a cap for operator-specific fares.)

Most other fares are going up by around 10%.

On the same day First Leicester Citybus is also raising most of its fares by approximately 10%.

I bet Leicester is not the only place hit hard.

Hi there,

I just joined as I saw a link to this thread on Twitter!

(I will hang around though as I am a rail nut as well!)

The fares are ludicrously stupid. First are raising their fares but I think as a whole people will find First's fare rises more acceptable for the level of service that they receive.

I live In Aylestone wedged between Aylestone road and saffron lane (OP will know where I mean) and on Aylestone road a single to town on all routes (Since they are all arriva down Aylestone road) costs me £2.00 in the current situation. When the changes are implemented this will mean a single will cost £2.20, which is far too much considering arriva run late and can't seem to adhere to any form of timetable.

Saffron lane is a more pleasant tale. On saffron lane, my single fare is currently £1.70 on First and £1.70 on Arriva. when the changes comes in, the rates will be £1.80 and £1.90 respectively. Arriva don't run as frequently down saffron lane like first do, who near enough run every 8 minutes at times.

Arriva are so bad with complaints, customer service and their bus services that I now refuse to use their buses. If i need to go somewhere, where only arriva operate (For example, Countesthorpe or South Wigston) then I will cycle there instead (it's still a green alternative).

Arriva are also really crafty devils. what they have done is organise the boundaries for day tickets in such a way that people who are actually in small suburbs cannot acutally get the cheaper day ticket and are required to pay a full £6. as it stands, if you are just doing a return trip you will be just as well to buy two single tickets. (example: single fare to countesthorpe village is £2.30 will be £2.50 on the 3rd. day tickets are £5.20 and will become £6 so two singles will be £5 still cheaper than a day ticket.)

I have also set up a page on FB to try and gain support for initiating a mass change by the public for the public. It has got to the point where Arriva don't respond to complaints and even go so far as to avoid a proper answer and even (i have seen evidence) falsify their excuses!!

so if you are on Facebook please like the page, we might be able to do something about this

I might sound like Mr.angry but it is driving me up the wall. it is now getting to the point where for some people a taxi will be cheaper than the bus!

 

[bb21]

I have many tales from talking to drivers, and generally speaking the schedules are suffering a lot more from tight turnarounds and heavy road traffic now due to cost-cutting exercises with the timetables in recent years. For Wigston-operated routes, one of the worst offenders is the interworking on evening and Sunday runs between 31/31A and 47/48 cutting down recovery times in half when it was first introduced.

There used to be some very bad instances of drivers skiving journeys at Southgates before it closed. Now it seems that some of those drivers have been distributed to both Wigston and Thurmaston.

For a fine example of buses being extensively late, look no further than the regular bunching of three buses on the 14 in the evening peak, bear in mind that it is a three-bus route with a 20-minute frequency (or supposedly).

Rest assured that you are not the only one experiencing poor customer services from them. Last time I wrote in about a bus leaving 5 minutes before it was due, from a terminus, the reply I got back was that the ticket machine and live tracking showed that it ran to the schedule. I didn't really know what to make of it: either eight people all had their watches set 5 minutes too fast or that someone was telling porkies.

First are fine if you want to hitch a ride for a journey over a mile long, otherwise they're more expensive. I think they will want to move towards a flat-fare structure as £1.70 can carry you quite a distance, while £1.20 only gets you as far as West Bridge/Frog Island/Belgrave Circle/Dysart Way/University Road/Royal Infirmary from city centre (£1.10 Arriva). Going two fare stages (as far as Upperton Road/Fosse Road/Melton Turn/Overton Road/Victoria Park/Freemen's Common from centre) is much cheaper on Arriva (£1.40 vs £1.70). Slightly further on both will charge £1.70, and then both will charge £2 further still, which is the cap effectively for First.

What I find most annoying with Arriva is how fares seem to increase linearly along many routes in relation to distance, at a rather steep pace, rather than a curved scale and being much cheaper per mile the further you go. For example, the Thurnby Lodge bus (53/A) have a faretable looking something like this:

Stage   Location                           Adult Fare (in pence)
  2     Bowhill Grove
  3     Brook Road (53A) Ocean Road (53)   110
  4     Humberstone Park                   140   110
  5     Portwey                            170   140   110
  6     Overton Road                        ?    170   140   110
  7     Dysart Way                          ?    200    ?     ?    110
  8     City Centre                        230   230   200   170   140   110

It doesn't take a genius to work out what the missing fares probably are. This is a route scheduled for a 45-minute round trip at off-peak times with plenty of slack at either ends. When compared to other operators, it is quite obvious how expensive it is.

I also agree with the comment about what they did with the boundary points. The city area was split into the Leicester Local Zone and City+ Zone a few years back. What they did was that they created a smaller area (no more than 2-3 fare stages from city centre) inside the original City Zone and called it the new Local Zone, and extended the boundary of the original City Zone at two places only, from Birstall Sibson Road Corner to Mountsorrel and also around the Blaby/Whetstone area (exact locations I can't recall off the top of my head), renaming it City+ Zone. The Day Rider price of £2.50 (at the time) was then changed to £2.40 and £2.60 respectively so that they could claim that some fares were going down. Of course for most people the new Local Zone was meaningless as it doesn't include most housing estates and covered a very small proportion of the population. Very soon afterwards the £2.60 fare was raised to £3. (I agree that people living in Rothley and Mountsorrel probably have benefited but that was about the only good thing that came of it.)

Is First any better? I don't really like to think so. I totally despise their action of cutting out evening services on many routes earlier this year. It is a scandal how population centres such as Evington, Rushey Mead and Highfields could be allowed to go without a service after 1900. If you now want to use the substitute Centrebus services (if you're lucky enough to have one), sorry but you cannot use a First ticket on them so you either have to pay again, or suffer a lower frequency during the day.

 

[nctx]

In Nottingham Premieres prices go up 2nd of jan and Trent Bartons on 15th of jan.

Big increases on Trent Barton but MANGO prices and routes were they are fighting Premiere will stay the same.

 

[bb21]

In Nottingham Premieres prices go up 2nd of jan and Trent Bartons on 15th of jan.

Big increases on Trent Barton but MANGO prices and routes were they are fighting Premiere will stay the same.

Any detailed information on how much they're going up by? Like most others, they don't advertise fare increases on their website, for obvious reasons.

 

[BuhSnarf]

I posted the below on my blog a few weeks back:

Arriva – (possibly) getting you there (http://buhsnarf.homeip.net/wordpress/?p=14683)

I would say that I know a fair bit about customer service, I was the most consistently highest performer at work. Hitting 36 100% service calls in a row over 6 months. I also know a lot about giving good customer service in difficult situations. I worked for three years in rail stations where you were either getting verbal abuse for prices or physical abuse for stopping shop lifters. And yet I never let the "issues" get in the way of giving first class service to customers.

I understand driving a bus must be hard. Challenging even. But no worse than described above.

But thia seems to be completely lost on those bus drivers chosen to work for Arriva Midlands. I pay £50 per month to occasionally have a bus arrive at the time it was scheduled. Often have a bus just not arrive at all and for a service that if you ask any question to the driver it is met with at best acknowledgment.

* Today, bus scheduled to arrive at 1923, arrives at 1950. Bus is hourly so not the following bus. Ask driver politely "are the buses running late today?" Ignored. Asked again. Again ignored and waved to move on.

* Last week, finished at 1805. Arrived at stop at 1815. 1835, 1923 buses did not arrive
Finally the 2023 turned up. No apology, nothing.

* 2 Sunday's ago. Waited for two hours because the first bus decided to bypass the stop to save time. I know this because when I arrived at work one of the girls informed me it turned up at a stop later in the journey. Wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't the main city centre stop it missed, was the first bus of the day AND it's an hourly service on Sunday. Seriously guys.

* This morning turned up to find bus sitting at stop, doors open and passengers on board but no driver. His shift had finished and so had walked back to depot. 20 mins later the next bus arrived. Everyone got off driverless bus and got on next one only for a driver to now appear and get on first bus and drive off!!! No apologizing and telling us to get back on first bus as was now leaving, nope not a word said. Also what kinda person just finishes the shift and leaves a bus with doors open at a bus stop with people on. Anyone fancy a free bus?

Where and how do they train these people? Why do they have no manners? Why do they work in a customer facing role if they lack politeness, manners and courtesy?

As a regular 50 bus user (10 trips per week) I know for a fact a lot of the drivers just bypass Enderby/Narborough village and dive down Narborough Road to make up time. Meaning that those working at Carlton Park (large business park) are sometimes waiting up to 2 hours for a bus. Last week another instance where 3 buses didn't turn up. After waiting 90 minutes there was (yes, I counted) 34 people at the bus stop. Called Arriva and was told that it was due to traffic that had been ongoing all day in the town centre. I said, but there is meant to be a bus every 20 minutes, can understand them being late, but we've not had anything for over 90 minutes.

Never get any compensation or anything.