(17 Apr 2014, 8:53 pm)Tom wrote I know the Coast & Castles services sell a lot of them, as tourists obviously will be visiting a lot of places around the area. One one occasion, I saw a driver sell 3 X £26.50 Arriva Weekly Passes, so that's good for Arriva, and they sell loads of Family Day Tickets too. Fairly profitable services like, probably the most profitable at Ashington. However, I do find the single fares on them a bit expensive, like £2.50 from Regent Centre to Morpeth is a rip off. If child singles work out as half of the adult fare, that'd make it £5 for a adult :O
Must admit, the £7.50 day ticket is fantastic value, aswell as the £13.50 family day saver.
At most Go North East depots, the ticket machines I've saw have had loads of different options, like ''Buzzfare'', ''Get Around'' etc. Go North East drivers do usually key these in. When I had a look on the 1 today on when I was sitting on the front seat, I noticed it said it had 95 (!) passengers, not sure if the driver has been keying too many of the fares in, as the bus was full, but no where near 95 passengers!
The single fares outside of town/city areas are always more expensive, for example once we get into North Yorkshire or County Durham, the fares go up rapidly. Middlesbrough-Sedgefield if I remember right is £5.20 single for example, compared to Middlesbrough-Easington for just £3.60 - so £5 RGC-Morpeth wouldn't surprise me. At least you can still get step entrance haulage on long runs up there for a few more months with 7482/3 staying!
The ERG machines have tons of "hot keys" across the bottom which can be set up according to different needs - Stagecoach had them with Megarider, Tripper etc, basically saves you going through the menus, a quicker way to issue the heavily used tickets. Interesting to hear GNE have a passenger count (on the main screen?) - I'm guessing it just counts hoardings though so part way through the route it could show 95 but say 50 people have alighted since the start of the trip, then only 45 would remain on board.