Dear Passenger

The latest news letter from Plymouth Citybus contains this letter:

Dear Passenger,

I wanted to take this opportunity to update you with some unavoidable changes to our ticket prices. Unfortunately from Sunday 10th February the cost of our fares will increase. On average our fares will rise by 4.5% but it is different for each ticket. We have not taken this decision lightly and believe we have kept the increase in price to a minimum.

We really do value each and every one of our passengers and want to be completely honest and upfront about the reasons why we've had to make this difficult decision.

Every year Plymouth City Council (PCC) reimburses costs only of us for providing free travel for OAPs so that we are no better or no worse off. Unfortunately, due to PCC budget constraints, and despite rising costs this has been frozen for the next year. This placed us in a difficult situation as a third of our passengers benefit from free bus travel. Our overall running costs have gone up by over 10%. The main cause of this comes from the Government's reduction in the Bus Service Operators Grant last year, meaning fuel costs have gone up by 40%, whilst other big cost increases came from the cost of insurance, up 20%. (chart below)

We have absorbed a huge amount of the above extra costs internally through good governance, investment and growth. To cover the remainder, without cutting the number of services we operate or the frequency they run, increasing ticket prices is our only option. We've made sure that there are only minimal increases to our most popular tickets and that children and young people are the least affected. Some tickets for shorter distances are coming down in price.

We always want to offer our passengers a fair deal on ticket prices and we hope you understand why we've had to make this tough decision. We have included a chart to show exactly where your fare goes below. If you have any concerns or questions about the new ticket fares please don’t hesitate to contact us on 0845 077 2223.

For a list of all our new day and season ticket prices, please click here.

Sincerely, Richard Stevens
Managing Director

We used to have 4 variations in ticket price, whereas now we will have 11. All single and return ticket prices will fall between the following prices:

• Adult Single: £1.00 - £2.50
• Adult Return: £2.00 - £3.50
• Child/Student Single: 80p - £2.00
• Child/Student Return £1.20 - £2.90

The full range of tickets is shown on their website

While any fare rise is disappointing its also inevitable, It is interesting to see them increasing the range of fares from 4 variations to 11 as this is much more how First seem to do their fares and allows a lot more control and flexibility to set their fares on individual routes and sections of routes. It will create a lot of confusion when the fares go up as passengers wont have any idea what the new fares are likely to be until they turn up on the bus and ask the driver. I am sure some passengers are in for a shock. Expect the local press to feature the anger prominently!

Of course there will be a lot of complaints. I am sure some will drag up the privatisation of Citybus as the reason fares have increased. Nearly all of these complaints will ignore the fact that prices of pretty much everything have gone up dramatically over the last year or so.  Asda have put the price of my preferred mouthwash up from £1 to £1.50 which is a lot more than 4.5% increase. They then have the cheek to offer a special deal: two for £2 – which is exactly what two used to cost me, but now I am “saving” a whole £1!

There was an interesting post on Omnibuses a short while ago which looked at the whole issue of bus companies highlighting their fare increases while supermarkets certainly dont highlight their increases. As always Omnibuses provokes lots of comments on all side of the arguments and is well worth a read. I am sure there is scope for bus operators to get more creative with their fares and special offers in the same way supermarkets do.

Citybus are certainly getting a lot better at promoting themselves on their buses which has to be a good thing. Their new livery is bright and bold you cant help but notice their buses, even if you dont like the swoops. Its good to see Citybus making more use of these bright red mobile billboards to promote themselves rather then try and sell us taxi services and new cars.

More like this…

©Mark Collins

 

and less of this…

As always your comments are welcome. Are Citybus getting better at promotion? Are these new fares fair? Should our bus companies highlight every time they put fares up?

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