One positive aspect of the deregulated bus system was the explosion of daily, weekly and longer-duration tickets designed around logical travel-to-work networks. Of course, they had boundaries, but largely in logical places, maybe the last stop in a built-up area or similar.
What they certainly did not do was cling to local authority boundaries, which in terms of travel patterns are often illogical, if not asinine. Many examples exist of boundaries running down the middle of roads or splitting a housing estate in two, neither of which make for a sensible ticket boundary.
Yet quite a lot of such nonsense prevailed in the 1980s. The passenger transport executives (PTEs) were innovative for their time with travelcards, but they stuck to the PTE areas. There were exceptions where PTEs’ constituent operators had ventured ‘out of county’, to use the phrase of which Merseytravel was so fond.
As fares suddenly leaped the moment the boundary was crossed, and there was no travelcard arrangement, passengers soon grasped that paying two separate fares was cheaper, and they frequently did. So no, the railway did not pioneer split ticketing!
I followed a blog recently that started with ‘puzzled of Bacup’ asking why there was a Bee AnyBus ticket that is not valid on any bus – just those heading south. Someone told them it is because the ticket is a Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) product.
“But why is TfGM selling tickets here? We are in Lancashire!” came the response. At which point, another ‘helper’ explained that it was because in 1969, when the SELNEC PTE was formed, Rochdale Corporation bus services ran as far as Bacup.
At that point the thread got very geeky very quickly. But we do that, confuse Joe Public, who then probably reaches for the Uber app.
Franchising has the danger of returning to these artificial boundaries. Over in St Helens, the Liverpool City Region (LCR) bus franchise will take over from Arriva’s operations very soon. Arriva’s tickets include Wigan and Warrington. The Wigan service is in the franchise but Warrington is not. So who ensures continuation of through ticket validity?
My feeling is probably nobody, or maybe the LCR ticket will be valid on the Wigan service and not to Warrington. It does not make for a happy situation, and nor does it make sense to passengers. It would be a shame to knock the shine off a new start with negative publicity.
Franchising guidance suggests protection of cross-boundary travellers is put in place, but I worry it is just warm words that will not be followed through.
