It’s an utter pain for drivers having to give change on bus services. It really is. The driver in the morning peak faced with a twenty and a nominal float is in difficulties. The note-wielding passenger for a £2 fare or even a £5 fare if this is with a large note slows everyone down and there are also many examples of Monday morning services arriving consistently late because of the sale of weekly tickets with high denomination notes—and the change issues they bring. It’s even been suggested (by passengers) that certain Monday peak trips need retiming!
But giving change is far preferable to exact fare systems. I admit I dislike them; it’s not in my culture and I’ve never been used to them. Had I lived in, say, Preston, well may be I would see the benefit more. If I worked in Birmingham, the same, too. There are cities where the exact fare hopper’s been maintained for years, though there are examples where it’s been dropped at or after deregulation.
It seems to me that those passengers who regularly use exact fare systems at best feel resentful at occasionally having to over-pay. It’s more than a minor inconvenience. It hardly encourages irregular users onto the bus, either. Visitors can feel bewildered as they struggle to find the necessary coinage and, let’s face it, they feel ripped off in the same way as motorists do when faced with a no-change car parking ticket system.
In almost every particular, the industry is far more customer focused than ever it was—except in the slavish continuation of drop vault fare systems. It’s as well that in some areas up to 40 per cent ridership is by way of an over-60s free pass. Roll on smartcards as a solution to exact fare systems but, as we said in May 2008, these are far from ready to launch.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Giving Change
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
One solution would be for the bus industry to accept credit/debit cards on buses. You can pay the conductor on trains with such cards.
When I moved to Birmingham in the 80s, I was against the fare box. However, it really makes an appreciable difference to boarding times. There is quite a high proportion of prepaid fares in Brum and the fare system is quite simple. This is quite important in a busy city like Birmingham.
It does reduce the risk of drivers being robbed and overall my experience suggests that it does not result in extra revenue for the company as people underpaying even out the overpayers.
Of Andrew Macfarlane's comment, there is a difference in the fares one pays on the railway: it is more. I think some increase in fares inevitable as the card companies have to be remunerated too, and well
Two solutions come to mind. Prepay like london or a oyster type card. Or give the driver more change
In the period leading up to, and immediately after deregulation I was working for a municipal operator who decided at that time to introduce fareboxes across the network, following a trial on one route. As a union representative for some of the admin staff, I was involved in some of the negotiations. The road staff favoured the fareboxes, but as some of the cost savings were at the expense of admin staff, I had a rather different perspective on that aspect. In practice that issue was resolved relatively painlessly with a voluntary redundancy scheme.
However, I did, and still do, have other reservations about farebox systems. The supposedly reduced risk of robbery was doubtful - the reality, unfortunately, is that while it may be more difficult for the robbers, they in turn become more determined - and therefore more violent. A bus with a farebox running late in the evening might have a full day's takings on board - a tempting target for a determined thief.
The other issue, especially at that time, was the impact of a 'no change' system in a competitive market. I saw that as a potential gift to any competitor - an easy 'USP' for them to use, knowing that the travelling public disliked the farebox system.
In the event, the fareboxes were introduced a couple of years before deregulation. New multi journey tickets, at a slight discount, were introduced to make the system more acceptable to passengers. A few months after D-Day, a competitor started, naturally making great play of the fact that they gave change. We, of course, had to follow suit on the routes affected by competition. Within a few years, all of the fareboxes were taken out of use.
At the time of the negotiations, there was discussion about (ticket) machines that could give change as a possible solution, but we were told that there none suitable for 'on-bus' use. Yet, a year or so after the fareboxes were introduced, I came across just such a machine on a bus in Cologne. Naturally, it took up quite a lot of space, and perhaps the Mercedes 0405 didn't rattle and shake the machine in quite the way that one of our Atlanteans would have done, but the technology works, and continues to do so - for example, the municipal operator in the city near to where I live now uses them. It is perhaps worth pointing out that, having travelled frequently in different parts of Germany over the last 25 years, I don't ever recall coming across a farebox system.
So I understand the advantages of fareboxes from the operator's perspective, but it seems to me that there are better, more customer-friendly, solutions available.
I used to live in Preston, and found Preston Bus' policy of exact fares to be amongst their worst customer unfriendly practice.
I would often be in a situation where the fare was 80p, and having £1 and nothing else would walk home as it wasn't too far.
When Stagecoach came along offering change on their services, I caught them instead.
If I went into a shop and they told me they didn't give change, then I'd go to another shop. Why do buses think they are different from any other businesses?
How interesting it is that its mostly municipal/former municipal companies that persist with fareboxes?
Anonymous said...
"How interesting it is that its mostly municipal/former municipal companies that persist with fareboxes?"
I think that fareboxes were always used principally by municipal operators, where the number of individual fare values was relatively low. An exact fare system would be even more impractical for longer routes with more complex fare structures.
Incidentally, another disadvantage of the farebox system is the increased proportion of coins that will need to be handled. Banks may not be enthusiastic about that, and may charge operators more for doing so. That was certainly the case with the example I mentioned earlier.
RC 169 weote "Incidentally, another disadvantage of the farebox system is the increased proportion of coins that will need to be handled. Banks may not be enthusiastic about that, and may charge operators more for doing so." Quite so as any money held does not get interest and anyhow needs space for storage, especially coin, whose value to space required is very low.
Post a Comment