If you have children, grandchildren or young neighbours, you’ll know that young people really do have a passion for environmental issues. They see things with uncomplicated eyes and cannot understand the damage we are inflicting upon the world around us. They shame the rest of us. If only adults and political parties were so focused.
On 9th May, one such youngster began an online petition asking “Kent Stagecoach Bus” to stop issuing bus tickets. With the number paying fares and receiving tickets, she asks of Stagecoach, “Is the bus really that eco-friendly after all this?” She ponders, “If you're getting a single, do you really need a slip of paper to tell you that you've got the bus?”
In the light of the Swindon petition situation, which commenters generally felt was a foot-shooting exercise, it will be interesting to see how Stagecoach reacts. Currently, there are but 162 signatories out of a target of 1,000. Disappointingly for the petitioner, few are from the Garden of England and most from the States.
The immediate answer to the question about the need for tickets is, well, we *do* need them, for all sorts of reasons: audit purposes, proof of purchase, proof of travel. Anyone concerned about the number of tickets they receive may well be travelling often and should therefore consider a season-type ticket, renewed weekly or monthly.
In the grand scheme of things, tickets are still an insignificant environmental issue. They are(should be) biodegrade and (should be) recyclable, thiugh I am never sure about treated paper. As an alternative to the private car, we shouldn’t lose site of the fact that simply switching modes is a far greener choice than worrying about a slip of paper. Stagecoach itself recognises that diesel engines are “dirty” and last month reaffirmed its international £11mil carbon reduction programme. It will see the eco-driving and eco-management techniques and technology across it UK bus driver workforce and fleet. Two thirds of Stagecoach South East’s buses meet Euro III.
It’s right f the petitioner to dream of a ticketless system, although we’re some way off this. Operators who have smartcard systems are torn between issuing a ticket or not, each time someone touches in. It may not be strictly necessary but there are whispers that free travellers, for example, don’t *always* register properly. The issuing of an appropriate zero-value ticket ensures reimbursement.
I suppose the consolation is that, since the peak in bus travel in the early 1950s, the number of squares or oblongs of paper issued is now considerably fewer, even though this has increased a little, recently.
i Bus ticket petition
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Going Ticketless
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5 comments:
The petition's daft, made all the more invalid when you see that nearly all of the people signing it aren't even in the UK, so are doubtfully even customers of Stagecoach. And 162 signatures so far ... that's out of how many bus travellers?
In the end, tickets are needed - but for fare payers. They're a proof of purchase and a proof that the driver isn't on the take. (And yes, I'm aware drivers can still fiddle even with tickets).
It's the zero fare payers that are the issue. Zero fare tickets are issued because _many_ local authorities don't trust operators to do it right, and so require each passenger to hold a ticket. In this modern world we live in, the machine should be doing the work and reading someone's pass. Get Smartcards right and we're halfway to solving this.
Anonymous - Here in Stagecoach Lancashire territory they do have smart card readers for the disabled and OAP Nowcard passes - I wonder if somehow that could be made to work with normal passes as well...
Or a pay as you go ticket that you top up instead of paying the driver.
Have to agree that the petitioner in this case has 'lost the plot'. There are plenty of more environmentally damaging aspects to bus operation than the paper tickets - we could start by making a comparison of fuel consumption figures for the current generation of buses against those of, say, thirty or forty years ago.
I would also imagine that, for those people not paying by some other means, the ticket has some legal status, and is therefore 'necessary'.
Perhaps she should be more concerned that rail tickets can't be recycled owing to the magnetic strip,or perhaps the miles of receipt rolls the supermarkets must use ?
Personally, I see the future of bus ticketing lying with electronic smartcards, like TfL's Oyster and TrentBarton's MANGO cards. These save time and money, and in my experience the 'touch on / touch off' type card leads to faster boarding than when passengers are fumbling around to get the correct change.
In their current form, bus tickets are the 'proof of purchase' for actual money handed to the driver, but such smartcards remove the problem of drivers on the make. Coupled with the (admittedly small) benefits of not wasting huge amounts of paper in the process.
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