(Yesterday, 9:36 pm)Storx wrote The price of buses in general are shocking lately;

They're so obsessed about banging on about £2.50 / £3.00 fares which might be cheap, if you're travelling from Consett to Newcastle.

The problem is the same fare from somewhere like Newcastle to the Swallow Hotel in Gateshead is also £2.50 and there's no realistic weekly/monthly tickets which is getting that any cheaper for a basic return.

If you're working 5 days a week, that's £100 a month (£98 due to T&W ticket). It's not cheap or good value, at all.

(Respect it's an extreme example that)

This is the point I made when the capped fares first came out. It's a complete lottery with our bus network on whether or not it's a value for money product for you. Introducing this without a hopper-style mechanism was a mistake.

The biggest issue with weekly/monthly tickets is that there's so much waste associated with them. I'd say the vast majority of those who were commuting daily in 2019 are no longer doing so. 5 days a week in an office is a thing of the past, and most have agreements of either 40% or 60% office attendance. This is another example of where the bus industry are engrained in the past though, and they've completely failed to grasp how the world of work now works.

Sure, there's the 'Flexi 5' product on offer, it's priced in such a way that you completely lose any value in what you previously had by purchasing a 28 day ticket. What's really needed is a larger bundle, e.g. 20 or 30 tickets, with a suitable discount applied. 

(Yesterday, 9:54 pm)Storx wrote You can travel on any regional train, bus, metro and tram across the whole of Germany for €58 

I still don't understand why we aren't subsidising something like that, over single fares imo. Mind maybe not as extreme though, maybe the £80 mark instead which is equivilant of someone making 3 returns every week maybe, give or take?

Because as a Country we seem to know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Look at Crossrail (or even the Northumberland Line) for example; everyone was moaning about cost, being a waste of money, what we already have been sufficient etc, yet once open and people are using it, no one ever talks about the cost anymore.

I think there's also a snobbery towards public transport in particular, and it stems from Thatcherism. A lot of vocal people view it as a dirty, inconvenient and desperate way to travel, so even something as simple as a bus lane is seen as a waste of money. We never apply the same critique to roads, e.g. the hundreds of millions spent on the Coal House improvements, Tyne Tunnel 2, the Coast Road, .... the list goes on.