Carousel buses!!

thespiderspeed

Actually perhaps this has more to do with the free bus travel scheme than a bus driver trying to pocket the money. Please bear with me while I explain...Lol!

The free bus travel scheme entitles the user to travel during 'off peak' times, which the government subsidising the bus companys depending on location and passenger numbers, as well as the large majority of local councils around England subsidising bus companies with a top-up fee to allow 24/7 free travel.

Now in my town we had direct cross town routes, where you could travel from one side of the town to the other side via the town centre without having to get another bus, which operated on popular routes. While we had these cross town routes, we had fare stages and the price would increase in propotion to the distance travelled.

One of the first things the bus company did after they introduced this scheme was to stop these direct cross bus routes and replaced them with individual circular routes that goes from the town centre to destination and back again. Now if you want to go across town you need to get 2 buses, one bus from your boarding point into town and then another bus from town to your destination.
We are now charged a flat bus fare for each route instead of a fare based on distance travelled on the route. So to get across town you would pay a double fare.

What I think is most important here is that the bus company by changing the routes like this have actually increased their passenger numbers, because people are now making two journeys instead of one. So since they are charging our government and local councils depending on passenger numbers, in my opinion it is actually falsifying the passenger numbers.


Finally...to my point. By issuing the OP with the ENG NAT CON ticket, is the bus driver actually falsifying passenger numbers who claim the free bus travel on purpose for the reason I have explained above??

punkpink

Hi guys thanks for all your help, i emailed the company as something really didnt sit right with me. They emailed back and asked me to provide a copy of my ticket, which i promptly scanned and sent to them, after a couple of hours i got this reply;

'Thank you for the scan of the ticket. As luck would have it the bus was in the right place at the right time today for me to download the CCTV and I have cross-matched this to our ticket machine data. Unfortunately this has uncovered a number of irregularities including the ticket given to you. Due to data protection and employment legislation I cannot comment further on the actions we will be taking against our driver, except to assure you we are taking the matter very seriously.'

I also got a bus ticket for a month for helping them, so i guess the bus driver was just not being honest! So the matter is cleared up and i was right to be suspicious. Annoyingly, if he had carried on then all paying customers would have to make up the shortfall he was causing so there would be ANOTHER price increase!

delain

Spiderspeed, here the bus company gets 98p per pass showing (ie pensioner) and £1.90 per single journey however short. So the bus company would miss out there unless they are printing extra OAP tickets when no one is getting on.

ETA a month's ticket is a very good offer Punkpink, I'm glad it's all sorted out for you

dealer_wins

Nice work OP, I think you have caught a thieving employee and they have him banged to rights!!!

j2011

I'm glad it's all sorted out for you

But not for the thieving driver, another one on the dole.

delain

j2011 wrote: »

But not for the thieving driver, another one on the dole.

If I had stolen from any of the places I've worked in I'd have expected to be fired... Don't see how this is any different? It was his choice to steal from the company, and he would have known the risks of being caught.

He may even be suspended on full pay whilst it's investigated, so don't feel too sorry for him.

carolinebrown

boarded the bus and asked the driver for an Adult Single to xxx, he proceeded to charge me £2.80, which in itself is no problem, it is the correct fare as far as i know, however when i proceeded to my seat and put my ticket and change in my purse i noticed that on my ticket it states;

Sooler

j2011 wrote: »

But not for the thieving driver, another one on the dole.

I hear there may be a bus driving bus job opportunity coming up ... due to something about theft apparently, another one off the dole.