(23 Sep 2015, 7:15 pm)DanPicken wrote I was on about the Triple ticket one.
Aye, there's so many areas and zones it can be easy to talk at cross purposes. The triple ticket here, for example, is probably different to the one you're talking about and covers Peterlee, Hartlepool and Sunderland and is quite cheap compared with the daysavers. The Arriva day tickets available to me are the Durham County for £7 or the All zones (in theory, Scarborough to Berwick, like the Explorer) for £7.70. The point is, though, that even though the sub 20 minute each way return journey to Durham costs £7, Arriva couldn't charge more for the 65 minute each way return to Sunderland because that would make it cost more than the Durham County ticket which extends into Sunderland. Single tickets can keep on increasing in line with distance, though, to reflect cost, as they're still cheaper than the cheapest day ticket. The services in question can't be cheap for Arriva to run, either. I've never been on an Arriva bus to Sunderland (or Hartlepool, for that matter) that was particularly full. Travelling from where we live to Sunderland and back, even by a more direct route, is a good gallon of petrol's worth, so bus prices that far are quite competitive.