Memorandum from Transport 2000: Herefordshire
and Worcestershire local group (TPT 31)
The local group representing the national environmental
transport campaign in the two counties
INQUIRY INTO
TICKETING ON
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
1. This short memorandum for the above Inquiry
is submitted by way of illustration of how the present systems
operate in a smallish (c 95,000 residents) shire district on the
edge of one of the conurbations with a passenger transport authority
[PTA] and executive [PTE]. The shire district is Bromsgrove, in
Worcestershire, and the whole of the boundary between Worcestershire
and the West Midlands county (which forms the PTA/PTE area) is
also the Bromsgrove/West Midlands boundary.
2. It is not intended to cover all the issues
raised in the Press Notice, but to highlight specific problems
in relation to ticketing in a particular area which may be hindrances
or deterrents to the use of public transport, either wholly or
within the district.
3. Until deregulation of bus services in
1985 or 1986, almost all the stage carriage bus services in the
district were provided by a single National Bus Company subsidiary,
Midland Red West [MR]. A small number of PTE services crossed
the county boundary for a short distance to reach their terminus,
but they remained essentially services within the metropolitan
county.
4. MR sold single bus tickets for each journey.
If a traveller required to use more than one bus service to complete
their journey, separate tickets had to be bought for each leg
of the journey, unless the traveller bought a "runabout"
or "rover" ticket, which allowed the holder to travel
on any of MR's services that day. The cost was disproportionate
for shorter journeys involving two or more legs on MR bus services.
5. MR became part of what is now First Group
(as, according to the First website, First Wyvern, though that
name does not appear on the buses as far as I have noted). The
"runabout" or "rover" ticket is now the "First
Wyvern" ticket, which is available in day, week, month and
term versions. The FirstDay Wyvern ticket in turn is available
in adult (£5), child (£3.50) or family (£10) versions.
That is relatively good value for many occasional return journeys
longer than 10-15 miles each way (depending on the particular
service, as fares are not calculated on a standard distance basis).
or for shorter trips where a change of service is required. In
addition, a range of local tickets, available on any of the company's
services within a specified area, is on offer.
6. The benefits of that approach have however
been limited by another effect of the deregulation. Whereas in
1986 all the bus services in Bromsgrove town (whether town services
or inter-urban) were provided by MR, that is no longer the case.
It appears that nowhere which had a bus service in 1986 has lost
it, and indeed there are one or two new services which run as
a result of local authority (or in the past health authority)
support. However, several services have been cut back, and instead
of MR running along nine radial inter-urban routes from the town,
as was the case in 1986, First now runs only on five. In addition,
they have given up operating the town services (serving four local
destinations).
7. On both the routes which MR or its successor
no longer operates and on some of those run now by First, other
operators now provide services, in some cases commercially, but
in all but two under contract to the county council. Currently,
six companies (including First) operate on the inter-urban routes,
while four companies provide the town services, two of which are
entirely contracted, while there are limited Sunday tendered services
on one route. At one point, along one corridor (Bromsgrove-Redditch),
the service was provided by four different companies, with some
interavailability of tickets, since First was the only commercial
operator.
8. The effect is now that First Wyvern tickets
are available only on three of the inter-urban routes operated
by First. The company runs on two other tendered routes which
are excluded from its Wyvern tickets—these include areas
where the bus will divert from its route to a pre-arranged pick
up or set down.
9. The effect of all this is that it is
no longer possible to make a bus journey requiring the use of
a local service and an inter-urban one on one ticket. I live on
one of the local routes which was served by First until six months
ago. A return journey by bus from the nearby stop to Birmingham
and back would then have cost me £5 (at current fares). It
would now cost me £6.40 as a direct result of First's withdrawing
from the route.
10. Though (according to Worcestershire
County Council's Second Local Transport Plan) the use of Bromsgrove
railway station has increased fivefold in the 10 years from 1994-95
to 2004-05, the ticketing system there also offers several quirks
and obstacles to the intending traveller, the effect of which
is to raise the cost of travelling by train unreasonably. The
quirks include regional journeys via Birmingham often being cheaper
if the traveller rebooks there—the combination of day tickets
between Bromsgrove and Birmingham, and between Birmingham and
Shrewsbury costs £14.40. The cost of a through day ticket
for the same journey is £19.50. For some journeys where there
is a service there is no "any permitted route" ticket.
For journeys to and from London, the traveller has to buy a ticket
via Birmingham or via Evesham/Stroud. In some cases, these idiosyncracies
appear to arise from the privatisation process: there was were
"any reasonable route" tickets between Bromsgrove and
London before the 1993 Act.
11. The PlusBus scheme in theory includes
Bromsgrove, but there is no co-ordination of services, and the
bus and railway stations are over a mile from each other, with
the railway station perhaps 250m from the bus stops serving it.
Information about the bus services is displayed at the station
(which, despite serving perhaps 60,000 people and being on one
of the principal cross country routes, is unstaffed), but the
bus services themselves do not operate in the evenings.
March 2007
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