Councillor warns First over bus fare increases

“This is a joke. They say between 10 and 30p but have scrapped £1 3 stop hop so 75/76 now charging a whopping £1.70 to get from West Street to Redcliffe - how can that be justified? (and before get any comments re laziness and walking there was genuine injury need to catching the bus for short journey!)”

“NOTE: As another sign of First's "transforming travel" motto, the X1 is soon to get an increase in frequency to give one bus every 20 minutes. Which is great. But the buses currently used on the X1 are going to Bristol to replace the buses lost to the 903 Park & Ride. The X1 will therefore be operated by OLDER buses being sent up from First's bus division in Plymouth. Improvement? Don't make me laugh.”

“Chipnum
Very informative thank you and hopefully it might make some people appreciate the true situation. There is a mob mentality on this forum to harangue Tim Kent when he has not really been given enough time to be judged, a bit like football fans asking for Terry Connor of Wolves to be sacked after 2 or 3 games.
And no - I have never voted for him or have any allegiance to him. Quite the opposite. I voted for Colin Smith when I was in the Whitchurch ward”

“I would like to quaosh a few myths being propogated in some comments.

1. Bristol City Council do not have 'a contract' with First. First operate buses in Bristol because they are the successors to the Bristol Omnibus Company, which was part of the National Bus Company. when NBC was sold off Bristol City Line was born and sold to its management. City Line was bought by Badgerline which in turn merged with Grampian Regional Transport (GRT) Holdings based in Aberdeen to form First Group. The majority of First's Bristol city network is operated commercially - it receives no operating subsidy from the council.

2. Bristol City Council, as transport authority can choose to purchase additional services by competitive tender to supplement the commercial network - i.e. routes serving places not on the commercial network, and/or paying for additional evening journeys on the commercial network. If you are familiar with First's timetables on the web you will know that these journeys are indicated with a '£' symbol and explanatory note. This is not a subsidy, it's a contract purchase of services.

3. Bristol City Council have no powers to regulate fares unless they go down the 'Quality Contract' route. So far no transport authority has gone down that route as there are legal hurdles to jump to prove that commercial bus services are not meeting the needs of the local area. The big bus companies will mount legal challenges to what amounts to state confiscation of private assets. The Passenger Transport Executive Group (PTEG) are particularly vociferous on this subject, as they have never got over losing their directly operated buses at deregulation. Tyne & Wear PTE (NEXUS), are especially keen to replace the three separate bus networks operated by Arriva, Stagecoach, and Go-Ahead in the Newcastle/Gateshead/Sunderland connurbation with regulated PTE tendered network.


The fare increases are actually due to two pieces of government anti-bus legislation. The first is the cut in Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) by 20% from 1 April. This is a fuel duty rebate payable to all bus companies based on mileage operated. The choice is either to cut mileage operated or raise fares. Most companies will raise fares rather than cut services. The other factor is the persistent underfunding by Government of senior citizen concessionary fares. Dept for Transport Civil servants fail to give local councils adequate funds to reimburse bus operators for free concessionary travel. Councils therefore try and reduce the agreed amount reimbursed for each journey made. In some areas only 50% of the fare that would have been charged is reimbursed. On routes where free pass holders outnumber fare payers, you can have full buses that make a loss.

Someone has to pay for these funding losses and unfortunately its the fare paying passengers.

I'm also a bit puzzled by talk of a smartcard. First are not introducing a smartcard, they are rolling out new card readers that will accept contactless credit and debit cards, plus ITSO smartcards. This means they don't have to administer a back office to run the card payments and top-ups, as the banks will do the former and there will be no need for the latter! If there is a smartcard it will be a council product, and may not purchase tickets on such favourable terms on First buses as a credit/debit card will. First will require users to touch-in and touch-out so the corect fare will be calculated automatically. Fail to touch-out and you will be deducted the maximum fare for the route.”

“So, what precisely, is BCC going to do about the fare rises?

Scweam and scweam and scweam until it's sick? It can, you know...”

“Maybe the EP photographer could visit Tim at home? We could have a photo of Tim sat on his sofa in his front room, holding up a copy of the new first bus tariffs, with a big sad face.

Perhaps the caption below could say

" Tim, from Hengrove, is very disappointed with the First Bus price hike, and is demanding answers!"”

“The limit of what he can do about it, is pull a sad face, and tell everyone he is really upset and disappointed."

and he is not even very good at doing that!!”

“I expect Tim Kent would love to be able to do something about the price hike , but unfortunately he is toothless.

The limit of what he can do about it, is pull a sad face, and tell everyone he is really upset and disappointed.”

“You have to cry or else you'd laugh. The BCC are doing with First exactly what the Government did with the banks, give them a bunch of money with no guarantees. Sometimes it gets beyond suspicious!”

“@KNIGEL - "I suppose my point is that if Tim is travelling by bus regularly he will know the fares are already expensive, the service (generally) poor and that First are not getting to their side of the bargain re GBBN ie. more buses cheaper fares"


Hi KNIGEL, nice idea but wrong. A small group of us showed Cllr Kent (and his GBBN 'minder') round Fishponds during the Bus Lane CONsultation and he was NO HELP what-so-ever.

Strange, since he had spent so long objecting to badly-run consultations, unwanted traffic calming measures and the council not listening to residents' concerns (in his own ward), but true!

http://tinyurl.com/2xnmra”