Bus passengers are getting a very good deal from weekly bus tickets, the TAS Partnership has found in its latest National Fares Survey (NFS).
The NFS, which analyses 1,047 bus fares across Great Britain from October 2017, shows that weekly bus tickets provide an average discount of 27% when compared with the cost of 10 single fares.
The report also finds that regulated rail fares have seen higher rises than the bus sector. Rail fares rose by 32% since 2009, compared to a rise of 24% for weekly bus tickets on average; rail fares also rose by 5% in the last two years, more than double the 2% increase in weekly bus tickets.
Meanwhile, day and weekly bus tickets have risen well below RPI: day tickets rose on average by 23% below RPI and weekly tickets 3% below RPI since 2009.
Only single bus fares bucked the trend – rising 6% more than RPI. However, TAS has found that single fares are a dying breed and often purchased by fewer than 10% of passengers in urban areas.
The NFS showed the average cost of a weekly bus ticket is £17.09 – a 2% increase from £16.74 in 2015 but 24% higher than in 2009.
£4.92 is the cost of the average day ticket – up 2% from £4.83 in 2015 but up by only 4% since 2009.
Finally, the average cost of a single fare was £2.33 – an increase of 5% since the previous 2015 survey but 33% higher than in 2009.
A strong trend to emerge from the survey is that mobile ticketing is taking the lead over smartcards, while contactless payment is the popular new kid on the block.
M-ticketing was available on 92% of the journeys covered by the survey – a 43% increase from 2015 – compared with 76% coverage by smartcards; meanwhile payment by contactless bankcards has made an impressive impact over a short period of time, and was available for 30% of trips.
