Plus Bus 30% Fare Increase

[andrewkeith5]

Interesting.

Did the council actively co-ordinate/facilitate (e.g. setting up partnerships etc), or rely on 'moral persuasion'.

(It's been an active topic up in Tyne & Wear recently, with the bus companies actively resisting giving Nexus more influence; e.g. Stagecoach advertising their argument on all their buses and threatening to pull out altogether.)

Yes, IIRC Oxford City Council led the 'Oxford Smartzone' project which aimed to take three operators services (Thames Travel, Oxford Bus Company (both Go-Ahead) and Stagecoach Oxford) and combine them, so routes where multiple operators ran services shared the timetable and tickets were interoperable within Smartzone. They all accept each others' smartcards too I believe.

The result was really very, very impressive - George Street used to be the most polluted street in the country, and you could see why if you went there as there were always hundreds of buses all over each other. Since Smartzone was introduced there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of buses without losing capacity on the network simply because the operators are working together and coordinating their activities.

Mind you tbh, I would sort of expect that from Oxford as it's practically bus city - I think there are 9 variants of Enviro 400 bus currently on the road there.

 

[Hadders]

I witnessed a poor situation on the buses in Oxford last year.

I had been to watch a rugby match and on my way back to the city centre the bus I was using was terminated short due to late running and we had to get the following bus which was run by a different operator.

I was using a plusbus so simply showed my ticket to the driver of the second bus as I got on. Other passengers who had paid a cash fare were not as lucky as they were forced to pay again - because the ticket they held was for a different operator.

I think it's poor when bus companies can't work together at times of disruption.