Worst Value Day (bus) ticket

[Goldfish62]

Diamond South East Adult Surrey Network = £7/£3.50 adult/child

Surrey County Council 'Acorn' paper ticket = £7/£3.50 adult/child

Both are valid on the entirety of Diamond South East's (formerly Hallmark) Surrey routes (458/461/555/557), but for the same price the county council's Acorn ticket additionally lets you use a number of other services run by other operators. Interestingly when the Acorn ticket was launched, Hallmark's own day ticket was £8 adult/£4 child, so more expensive than the multi-operator Acorn that also covered all their routes.

There's a more extreme example in Cornwall. First's "Adventures by Bus" day ticket is currently £15 and can only be used on a handful of routes (mainly open top) under that brand, yet the Cornwall all-operator day ticket is £9 (£5 from 10th April) and can be used on all the ABB routes.

 

[Typhoon]

Appears to have been an unintended consequence of today's fare increase. I will whisper in certain ears...

Thank you, although as they are keen to point out, it is a 'simplification' across most of the network (not Eastbourne). And to be fair, there are winners as well as losers (although the general trend is upwards).

I think you are right. I have just looked at how much it would cost for me to go to the nearest town (certainly an increase but less than £2), and among the tickets I was offered was the Discovery!

Arriva's Medway Day is £5.70. Medway is not big enough to warrant that.

There are worse - the Arriva Swale Day is £4.80 and covers the 334 Maidstone to Sheerness and a couple of Sittingbourne locals, you can't even get to sunny Leysdown any more. However, I think these should be treated as a cap on a return fare rather than a conventional Day Ticket. Arriva tickets are not particularly cheap, I have no idea what the fare from, say, Allhallows or Cliffe to Chatham is, nothing obvious, but I reckon £5 single easy.

 

[railwaytrack]

Thank you, although as they are keen to point out, it is a 'simplification' across most of the network (not Eastbourne). And to be fair, there are winners as well as losers (although the general trend is upwards).

I think you are right. I have just looked at how much it would cost for me to go to the nearest town (certainly an increase but less than £2), and among the tickets I was offered was the Discovery!


There are worse - the Arriva Swale Day is £4.80 and covers the 334 Maidstone to Sheerness and a couple of Sittingbourne locals, you can't even get to sunny Leysdown any more. However, I think these should be treated as a cap on a return fare rather than a conventional Day Ticket. Arriva tickets are not particularly cheap, I have no idea what the fare from, say, Allhallows or Cliffe to Chatham is, nothing obvious, but I reckon £5 single easy.

Chatham to Allhallows and Chatham to Cliffe are both £5.00 Single and £5.60 Return so yes the day ticket for £5.70 is not much extra.

 

[Runningaround]

North Wales BWS 1 means it's £5.70 to Wrexham
Not available on T12 so Day Ticket £14.70 to Wrexham. Drivers don't sell the £11 Day ticket for some reason.
Cambrian Railcard means the train is cheaper between many stations on the Shrewsbury - Machynlleth.

 

[317 forever]

The Go North West day ticket at £5.50 from the driver or £5.20 from the app seems expensive.

They only run a small part of what was First Manchester. Yet for £6.40 you can get a System One Bus Daysaver valid on all buses in Greater Manchester.

 

[Teflon988]

Interesting. I've tried to find what my local Stagecoach company (SE) sells them for, nothing obvious on the tickets section (Stagecoach only tickets); a search for multi-operator tickets gives 'no tickets of this type available in this area' (for four distinctive parts of the region).
While it may only be 10p now, I am concerned that the gap may widen. I remember when there was a joint Stagecoach/ Arriva ticket (possibly Explorer) and it cost about a quid more to buy the Arriva version, it made sense in those places served by both companies to buy the ticket from Stagecoach, get off at the next stop and travel on Arriva buses for free.

Drifting from the theme, multi operator tickets need encouraging. There will be no point in implementing the 'Bus Back Better' policy of improved routes and higher frequencies (or even same routes and same frequencies) if it costs an arm and a leg to get anywhere that involves a change of bus.

Just been on the Stagecoach website and selected randomly Canterbury and Dover locations for Day rider ticket and found the following

 

[Typhoon]

Just been on the Stagecoach website and selected randomly Canterbury and Dover locations for Day rider ticket and found the following

Thanks but I think this was resolved in #24, 25 and 26. It depends what you search for - I searched under 'multi operator' tickets (which is what Discovery is) rather than Day Rider, which is a Stagecoach product; @Man of Kent offered to raise it locally. As he rightly says, there has been an overhaul of ticketing on Stagecoach SE, and this may have been missed. It looks like he was a man of his word. It is no longer possible to get to the page I accessed.

 

[Deerfold]

You mention East Yorkshire. Their all areas day ticket is quite expensive at £12.50. When I was staying in Pickering last summer that appeared to be the only one of their day tickets which included the Scarborough to Pickering route.

Whilst their Hull area ticket is a bargain at £3.50.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Apr 2022 ==

Doesn't help TrentBarton Peak District area operations is now shared with Centrebus as separate company, that you have to buy separate tickets if you don't want to double back on the same route, or buy the subsidised Derbyshire Wayfarer instead.

Is the Wayfarer subsidised? I thought the County Council merely operated as an intermediary for these.

 

[Hophead]

How about Stagecoach's Brighton DayRider at £4.60 from the driver? Gets you travel on all their routes from Patcham in the north to Shoreham in the west including Brighton city centre. "All their routes" comprises the 17 (hourly, not evening) & 700 (5 per hour). If you're under 16, the same ticket is £4 (or £3.50 on the app; curiously, the web page doesn't quote a price for an adult ticket on the app).

For comparison, Brighton & Hove's City Saver covers a similar area, but extends to Saltdean in the east and considerably more buses. This costs £5.20 from the driver or £4.70 on the app and includes every bus that isn't Stagecoach.

 

[railwaytrack]

How about Stagecoach's Brighton DayRider at £4.60 from the driver? Gets you travel on all their routes from Patcham in the north to Shoreham in the west including Brighton city centre. "All their routes" comprises the 17 (hourly, not evening) & 700 (5 per hour). If you're under 16, the same ticket is £4 (or £3.50 on the app; curiously, the web page doesn't quote a price for an adult ticket on the app).

For comparison, Brighton & Hove's City Saver covers a similar area, but extends to Saltdean in the east and considerably more buses. This costs £5.20 from the driver or £4.70 on the app and includes every bus that isn't Stagecoach.

That ticket is also valid on the 9 within the Shoreham area. There is also the baffling situation where Brighton to Patcham (17) and Brighton to Shoreham (700) both costs £2.55 Single or £4.80 Return meaning that buying a Day Ticket for £4.60 is 20p cheaper than buying a Return Ticket for £4.80 which makes no sense. I do not know why they would price it like that.

 

[Typhoon]

That ticket is also valid on the 9 within the Shoreham area. There is also the baffling situation where Brighton to Patcham (17) and Brighton to Shoreham (700) both costs £2.55 Single or £4.80 Return meaning that buying a Day Ticket for £4.60 is 20p cheaper than buying a Return Ticket for £4.80 which makes no sense. I do not know why they would price it like that.

Sometimes I think they just jack prices of singles and returns by a certain percentage without consideration for things like Day Tickets. It may have come about because they have frozen the prices of Day Tickets in general as a promotion and this has been an unexpected consequence. I don't know about now because there are lots of new drivers, but at one time a particular return was the same price as a Day Ticket and drivers would sell passengers the Day Ticket and explain it could be used on any other bus as well.