Moaning

It seems that once again Plymouth Citybus is under attack in the press…

A group of students from Plymouth University have launched a campaign to tackle Citybus on their fares policy which states that only those in full-time education and up to the age of 23 are eligible for discounted bus tickets.  Words such as "ageist", "discriminatory" and "unfair" have been used by the students to describe the bus company's policy.  Emma Wilson, vice president of the Plymouth University Student Union education and welfare, said: "At the beginning of the academic year we had a number of students coming to the union to tell us that they had been refused student fares to which we contacted Citybus and received a less than satisfactory reply, with the policy remaining unchanged.

Peter Oliver, commercial manager at Citybus, said the policy was in place to prevent fraudulent activity. He said: "At the moment, because the concessionary fares are done on smart card and key, there is no database that we can access that tells us who is in full time education.

"But people need to remember that we are one of the few travel company's that offers student discount.

"It's only recently that we opened child fares from 16 years of age to include those up to 19 years of age and students to those under 23, and I feel like we're being condemned."

This is Plymouth

It does seem really unfair to Citybus. None of the other bus companies in Plymouth offer a student discount to students as old as that. I don't think there are that many bus operators anywhere that go quite that old. The use of words like “ageist” and “discriminatory”  is particularly unhelpful. If you use that argument then free travel for pensioners is ageist and discriminatory against younger people. I would like to have some of the various student discounts on cinema tickets and various other venues. The fact that such discounts are only for students is discriminatory too but I dont see students complaining about that!

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