Price increase on bus fares overnight

Extra costs force Council to raise bus fares for first time in 3 years

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The price of a bus ticket in Nottingham has increased for the first time since the June of 2011.

From now on, the adult single ticket will cost £2 rather than £1.70, a 17 percent price increase. An all-day ticket price has gone up to £3.50 from £3.40, and a group rider ticket has gone from £8 to £9.

There will not be a price change with Easyrider passes while Kangaroo ticket prices will go up by 20p raising the price of the ticket to £4.20.

Nottingham City Council has pointed out that there has been a 18p increase in the price of diesel along with a 7.74 per cent increase in the inflation rate during this same period.

They also added that in the last three years, raising costs of insurance and the government’s changes to fuel tax on bus operators had contributed to the £2 million increase to running costs.

David Thornhil, chairman of the Notts Campaign for Better Transport spoke to the Nottingham Post and said that the price change was not all bad, that “like a curate’s egg” it had some good parts. He continued by saying “you have to applaud NCT for holding off on increasing fares for so long.”

“But the increase in the single tickets will hit those in the pocket who are perhaps least able to afford it.”

Anthony Carver-Smith, the marketing manager of Nottingham City Transport said that the cost increases came to the point that the company could not absorb them anymore.

He said “We were determined to ensure that bus travel wouldn’t be yet another area of life that was becoming more expensive and so we made it our policy to freeze fares for as long as we possibly could and we’ve managed to freeze them for almost three years.”