The big plan for better buses
(29 votes, 4.34 out of 5)
Loading ...Integrated Ticketing
Tickets you can use on buses run by any company, and on other forms of transport too, for that matter.
Have you ever got on a bus only to be told by the driver that your ticket is not valid? The same number, going to the same place, but run by a different company. So off you get to wait in the rain for another.
There is no obligation on bus companies to honour each others’ tickets on the same bus line. This was one of the issues highlighted by a recent in-depth investigation by the Competition Commission into local bus services. Their final report recommended that the Scottish Government should make it obligatory for bus companies to honour the tickets from other companies serving the same route. But there has been no movement from the government on this.
And what about integrating with other forms of transport too? Not just the timetabling (it seems obvious that the train shouldn’t leave 5 minutes before the bus is scheduled to arrive) but also with tickets. The Oyster card used on London public transport allows passengers to move seamlessly between bus, train and underground. You don’t even need to work out in advance whether you’d be better off getting an all-day ticket. The system works it out for you.
All Glasgow’s buses have the capability for a smart card system, it’s the one that concessionary card use to scan their cards. £42 million of public money was spent on the system, but it looks as though we’ll still have a long time to wait till smart cards arrive for general bus users.
How would you like to pay for your bus? What are your experiences of smart cards in other places?
I would love to be able to buy a ticket from a machine at the stop or from a travel centre, rather than having to break notes, fiddle with change and hold up other passengers (First don’t give out change, so handing over a tenner to buy a £2.50 ticket is not happening).
The infrastructure all seems to be in place for this given that you can already use a zonecard on buses, trains and the underground, but it could certainly be simplified (I looked at the website recently and went away having completely no idea how many zones I would need to get from home to work.
Re the smart card readers: I find they can be quite slow. I don’t have experience of the London Oyster cards so I don’t know if they’re faster to read, but if there are a number of concessionary passengers boarding a bus, it does seem to take forever to get them processed, so I’d like to see the hardware improved to speed up the process before smart cards are rolled out to the general passenger. And really, why do paper tickets need to be issued after the card has been scanned? If you’ve got a card that’s proof that you’re entitled to board the bus, isn’t it? I understand the need to scan the card to count the number of concessionary holders processed so as to claim payment, but there should be no need to slow things down further (and waste paper!).
Personally, I’m happy enough with the First bus season tickets. They’re decent value for money and doesn’t need to be processed electronically so you can just show it to the driver as you board. I do wish that they were more obvious on the First website though and listing where you can buy them from, since unless you already know about them, they seems difficult to get hold of.
I think this would be an excellent idea, and would help towards something else I think Glasgow needs to do with its buses. I used to live on Renfield Street, which, along with its “twin” street, Hope Street, is one of the most polluted streets in Glasgow. Every bus in Glasgow seems to go down that street, meaning you’ll often see two or three buses trying to get past each other, and at rush hour I could look out my front window and count 20+ buses as far as the eye could see. Every single one making the same journey down that street. Ridiculous.
This just causes congestion, especially at the Renfield Street/West Regent Street junction, where bus drivers pull out just as the lights are changing to amber and get stuck halfway, thus preventing people going down Renfield Street from moving, and causing more congestion.
The answer? Shuttle routes. Why have multiple buses making effectively the same journey through the city centre, when you could take, say, the 61 from Maryhill, get off at the top of Renfield Street, hop onto a shuttle bus down the street, and back onto the 61 at the other side? Integrated ticketing would allow this to work, just like on the London underground, where you just hop on and off different tube trains as you require in order to get to your destination.
This would also prevent hold ups, as you wouldn’t get buses getting stuck in the city centre because another bus has blocked the path or whatever. Paying for specific routes is 20th century stuff – people should be paying for journeys, and then leave it up to them how they get there.
There are such brilliant comments and ideas coming up
On the website. I’m going to put aside a long time to look over them in drawing up The Big Plan
Let’s do it like they do in Berlin’s enviable system. Ideally it’s for zones on any form of transport, any time. Different options available including one-journey tickets covering 1-3 zones on any mode of transport. It makes sense to be integrated. Imagine being a visitor here? Imagine being a visitor from Berlin or somewhere else where it’s better?
I use First’s 20 from Drumchapel and as other companies are competing on this route, there are fewer of the bus I want that fit with my all day/week ticket,going beyond.
I agree with the above about cutting down on repetition on the same roads although on some of these buses there is standing room only. Scheduling and coordination would be important. I think more of us would use other options/modes/routes if there was a better ticket system and it didn’t cost so much more to do this. Linking areas without entering the city centre would be great. We do have the 89/90 which I can imagine is dear to run as not so busy. Perhaps a relay would be more viable.
There is bound to be information out there from successful examples as to how to integrate the services of separate companies. Perhaps they could get folk on the train to play phone music, swear and smoke and we could pretend it’s the bus, to even the playing-field.
Integrated ticketing is a no-brainer really and there’s no reasonable excuse as far as I can tell that it has not been implemented. The technology exists but clearly the will in First and dare i say, in SPT, is utterly lacking. The inconsistency between transport is ridiculous.
Take a journey from Partick to Glasgow Central. On the train it is £1.80 for a return, on the subway it is £1.20, on the bus it is £1.85. If you live further west and wish to travel to Partick say by bus, then take a train to Glasgow Central you cannot get a through ticket. The system is utterly at odds with the needs of the travelling public and is indicative of a lack of concern amongst the companies operating these routes.
Also, you can travel right across the city for £1.85 PROVIDED you are not changing buses. But if you want to make a shorter journey that involves a change of bus then you need to buy two tickets, or an all day ticket (provided it’s not peak time of course).
The current approach is indefensible.