Manchester First bus fares

tight_scotsman

Quat wrote: »

This will be down to the employment policy shared by all bus operators. All potential drivers of peasant wagons are thoroughly screened to ensure the highest levels of arrogance and spitefulness.

yes you are about right there hence the reason i would never work for any of the big 4 bus companies the way their drivers treat passengers is a reflection on the way the companies treat drivers all though this is no excuse for downright bad manners and arrogance

a lot of you may find the smaller bus company employees have a nicer attitude ect thats because thier bosses treat them far better than the big 4 bus companies do

the big 4 as they are known in the industry are only interested in profit and nothing else they dont care about the traveling public

like i said previously its time the bus industry was regulated again to give the traveling public affordable transport thats clean and reliable

narabanekeater

Im in Leicester too and did you know you can buy a 10 trip muliti ticket from Paypoint a outlet for £14? this gets marked on the bus so works out to be £1.40p a journey. Id urge people to check of the Firsts website for where you live to see if they do the same. This can also be bught from the main bus timetable place in Town and if your in Leicester like me this is in the Haymarket

pogofish

Makeandsave wrote: »

I am shocked to learn,

There single fare £1.90 is going up to £2.10 and there day saver £4.10 is going up to £4.50.

I know prices go up but its getting to the point where i can not afford to use the bus any more.

You must appreciate that children in America have to get to school. For free!

About a year ago, the Aberdeen Press and Journal ran an interview with the then/new First boss who explained that the majority of price rises for the next few years will be the direct result of First's failure to corner the school bus market in the US. Which has left them servicing a significant number of loss making contracts and it appears we are going to be the chumps to pay for it.

The P&J archive only goes back six months so I can't link it but if anyone has a subscription acct, they should be able to find it.

And I thought First couldn't go any lower after the time about four or five years before that when they trumpeted how they had no fare rises for the preceding year or so - When in fact they had imposed no less than fourteen increases in the period!

Absolute shower! :mad:

Jeff_Bridges_hair

Evilm wrote: »

The daily fare is £7.80. 5 day tickets is £39.00.

The weekly season is £39.30, 5.38 day tickets (Ok, so 30p more).

The monthly is £151, 20.15 day tickets (so barely a days discount if I use my 20 "free" days of holiday evenly*).

The quarterly is £452.80, 58.05 day tickets (less than a days discount)

The six monthly is £905.50, 116.09 day tickets (I'd be paying them 1 day extra in the first half of the year, paying them 6 extra in the second half due to fixed holiday allocations)

The Yearly is £1572. This is 40 weeks of the basic season ticket or 201.54 day tickets. Now I have done the calculations properly (and updated the flaw in my spreadsheet ) this one is better and saves about 23 days work a year.

.

Again you are making a comparion of working days - forgetting that a weekly covers you for 7 days. Hence why its called a weekly. If you are savvy you can actually make your monthly ticket last a bit longer also.

And as for the annual - thats not bad value considering you will get a goldcard discount on other journeys you may wish to make during the year within the 'network south east' as it was called area and that includes discounts on others travelling with you also.

WestonDave

Another First monopoly down here in the West Country - ours are going up between 10p and 70p. I worked out that even on their "ten ticket" rate, I can nearly drive into town (allowing 45p per mile not the petrol rate which is probably more realistic as for a car owner certain costs are fixed) and park for 2 hours before driving home for the price of 2 journeys on the bus. If I take my wife then its clearly cheaper to drive, and if you factor 2 kids in then even thinking about the bus is a sign of madness.

Its interesting to note the comments about the buses being recycled - this seems to be happening everywhere. Throughout Bristol and Somerset & Avon (two adjacent First operators) there are very very few new buses. A small number were brought in last year for the Bristol Airport Flyer service (possibly part funded by the Airport), and there are a handful of 09, and 59 plates spread around, but the vast majority of the fleet is 05 plated or older. There are also an alarming number of letter prefix vehicles in the fleet as well - some dating back to 1995! At the moment it seems like fares are increasing, profits and dividends are being maintained, but fleet renewal is being squeezed out of the middle.

This double squeeze on passengers (increased fares + declining vehicles) is made even more annoying when councils like ours put in place all sorts of bus priority measures to help buses get through congestion, only for most people to find that they are too expensive to use. If you get on a bus round here they tend to be used by students or kids (for whom a car isn't a legal possibility) or people on free bus passes. This is going to start killing off town centres because as people find it harder to drive in, and decide that a bus isn't a viable option, they will head for out of town shopping centres in ever bigger numbers, right at the time when traditional high street retailers are struggling. We have a small retail park near us which has B&Q (huge warehouse store), Comet, M&S, Boots, a few other clothes/shoe shops and a massive Asda. Between them there isn't much essential you can't get, and its easier for us to drive 10 miles there and back than to get 1 mile into town and back!

Jeff_Bridges_hair

A lot of Buses that get cascaded down to other operators come from London Buses when they are finished with them. The good news abotu this is that they are very well maintained and can get many more years use out of them..

System

Evilm wrote: »

I was quoting from head calculations but now I've actually looked up the exact working days for each period this year. It doesn't look quite as bad so I have changed by original post to reflect that and hold my hands up that it was a slight over reaction. )

Andover to Salisbury before 9am - (the Anytime Fare - the "off peak" applies from 9ish onwards. There isn't a 'peak fare on this route so the Anytime is the most expensive ticket). It does go away from London but there are plently of people using the route.

The daily fare is £7.80. 5 day tickets is £39.00.

The weekly season is £39.30, 5.38 day tickets (Ok, so 30p more).

The monthly is £151, 20.15 day tickets (so barely a days discount if I use my 20 "free" days of holiday evenly*).

The quarterly is £452.80, 58.05 day tickets (less than a days discount)

The six monthly is £905.50, 116.09 day tickets (I'd be paying them 1 day extra in the first half of the year, paying them 6 extra in the second half due to fixed holiday allocations)

The Yearly is £1572. This is 40 weeks of the basic season ticket or 201.54 day tickets. Now I have done the calculations properly (and updated the flaw in my spreadsheet ) this one is better and saves about 23 days work a year.

OK, so reviewing it with the spreadsheet and a working day calculator the Yearly is the only one that makes it worth bothering to buy it and in this economic climate that's a bit of a gamble to save £180ish when if something changes it could cost me quite a bit more than that.

If I get a single days illness or flexi time for all the rest then I'm out of pocket by buying it.

The whole problem starts with the fact that the weekly season ticket is more than 5 day tickets. If it wasn't for that it would start to be more reasonable. I keep looking at it telling myself I must be wrong and they can't have done that but I can't see where I am going wrong.

*Christmas and 1 week company shutdown in late summer is preallocated for us. (I appreciate that I am lucky to get 28 days plus bank holidays)

/ Apologies to OP for threadjacking.

Yeah that is ridiculous, having the weekly rate more expensive than 5 return tickets is very strange. I realise that weekly is 7 days but season tickets disregard this as they realise that most people will only be using the train 5 days a week.

I buy my tickets yearly as a Manchester train card was £787 (its gone up now), that works out at only being £65 a month and a monthly ticket is about £85 now I think. I tend to sign up for a 0% credit card buy the ticket and then just pay £65 a month for the year.

Steer73

Its the same where more than one company operate. In Merseyside the flat fare on Arriva is £ 1.90. Other operators charge pretty much the same as far as I am aware. I do not thin the presence of rival companies results in lower fares - not here anyway.

Bus fares here have tripled in the space of 10 years. Oil prices may have gone up in that time, but they have not tripled. It is a joke, and I do not know how they can get away with it. Especially nowadays when the governement are desperate to push public transport at every oppertunity.

The only good thing is that (on my route anyway) most the Arriva buses are new and generally clean.

System

Steer73 wrote: »

Its the same where more than one company operate. In Merseyside the flat fare on Arriva is £ 1.90. Other operators charge pretty much the same as far as I am aware. I do not thin the presence of rival companies results in lower fares - not here anyway.

Bus fares here have tripled in the space of 10 years. Oil prices may have gone up in that time, but they have not tripled. It is a joke, and I do not know how they can get away with it. Especially nowadays when the governement are desperate to push public transport at every oppertunity.

The only good thing is that (on my route anyway) most the Arriva buses are new and generally clean.

10 years ago oil was about $30 a barrel, now its about $112 a barrel

Jeff_Bridges_hair

goater78 wrote: »

10 years ago oil was about $30 a barrel, now its about $112 a barrel

Dont let a fact get in the way of a rant man goater....