Bus travel is uneconomical for parties >1

[CaptainBeakyandhisband]

Just taken a trip into our local city centre with the kids. Something I did loads when the kids were small and didn’t need their own ticket. Now they do need their own tickets it’s really expensive - £9 for the three of us. It’s a short journey so we could drive, and parking centrally would be cheaper (even free as we have membership to a gym with parking). I’m happy to use the bus as it’s taking our car off the road for this journey, but it must be very unaffordable for people on low incomes/without vehicular access.

Until there is an acceptance that public transport should have a level of subsidy about the same proportion say as Madrid or Paris, that will always be the case.

Presumably most people don't have access to free parking. And those without a car haven't had to spend money buying/insuring/maintaining one so may find it easier to spare £9.

Even without the free parking it would be much cheaper. But you’re right about the sunk cost of car ownership.

but from a net zero perspective subsidy would help

Where I live an adult return to town is £6.90 and a child is £3.45, the bus only runs every 30 minutes during the week and hourly on Sundays/Bank Holidays. It takes 45 minutes to complete a nine mile journey as it goes along a massively circuitous route, there used to be other buses including a direct express one but they were all cut as cost saving measures.

A family of four going into town by bus would be paying out £20.70 before they even went anywhere.

There's a tennis class that runs a 30 minute (kid pace) walk from their school. We'd have to run to make it in time and that's not realistic after a school day and before another hour of sport. It's a 5 minute bus ride but would cost £10.00 return. It isn't justifiable.

I know what you mean. We live 15m drive from a town centre. If we wanted to go into town we would drive and park free for 2h. If I wanted to be there longer it is cheaper to pay for a taxi than it is bus fares for three or four of us.

When I moved out of London I was surprised how expensive (and infrequent) public transport was.
It would cost over £10 to take my kids to the next town on the bus, having walked 10 min to the bus stop. I can drive there in about 15- 20 min, and I know roads I can park on for nothing, and slthough parking is expensive it's nowhere near £10!!
The train is slightly cheaper, but slightly further from the town centre. DD and friends go to the 2 nearest towns on the train for shops, cinema etc.

It is heartbreaking and infuriating and ridiculous.

My town council spends 5 percent of its budget just on subsidizing car parking (ie charging less for parking than it costs to maintain the car parks).

We try to use public transport wherever possible but it feels like a mugs game. Over twenty quid for a family of four on the bus. Eight pounds to park (which people think is extortionately expensive)

I think looking at childrens tickets would help massively. It’s the same with the train - we used public transport so much more when they didn’t need a ticket.

Me and my partner got a bus into the local town a few months ago. It took 3 times as long as it would have in a taxi and cost only £2 less for the two of us.

between the cost, time and reliability it’s hard to be convinced to use public transport

When we visit my parents in the UK we are always shocked at the bus prices, the poor service (hardly any buses and you need to pay for two separate buses where they are which pushes the price up. The few times I have taken the bus it is mostly taken by older people with free bus passes. The UK just really doesn't seem to prioritize public transport. In contrast, where I live all kids under 14 travel for free, a normal bus ticket costs €1.50 for 75 minutes on any route in the city and suburbs. My annual bus ticket is subsidised by my work and cost €50. All designed to encourage people to minimize car use and it's working.

Could you not walk into town with your children OP?

The cost of everyone incessantly driving private cars is far greater than you suggest. It's killing all of us and our planet.

I think you’ve got to compare bus travel not just with parking, but overall cost of running a car, petrol, service & MOT, replacing vehicle every few years, repairs and tyres. DH just went from a company car to running his own and it makes a huge difference, we put aside a few hundred a month to cover the cost of it.

Not to say buses aren’t too expensive and should be subsidised.

I could, and we sometimes do, but it’s slightly too far for them to do both ways without major moaning (they are 5&7; it’s a couple of miles). So we would still end up with the one-way cost.

We are pretty journey conscious - a one car family, do as much on foot as possible, or by bike. Would love to use the buses more (they’re going there anyway)

I didn’t have a car for a long time, and it was cheaper to use buses and trains, but journeys took longer and I could only work places that were served by the bus. It was more restricted.

Yep. It's cheaper to drive in to my nearest city, including the congestion charge and parking, than it is to get the bus for three people. Quicker too as it doesn't go around the houses. I'll only ever get the bus if I'm desperate.

@wonderstuff it generally is cheaper if you are a solo traveller. For sure. But it’s as soon as you start having to buy more than one ticket it starts to stack up.

I think car clubs are the answer and I encourage everyone to try out their local one.

As has been pointed out, once you have paid all the exorbitant costs of car ownership, insurance etc, you want to use your car. But much of the time it is just sitting there, clogging up the street or taking up valuable storage space in your garage.

Sharing is the way forward!

We have a car club in our city and it is very convenient for hospital trips, occasional days out etc. The rest of the time we don't need a car. Very occasionally (e.g. for a week away in the countryside) we will rent a car from Hertz etc. as the traditional rentals are still cheaper for multiple days.

Once most of us don't own cars, hopefully public transport will become more subsidized and more reliable.

YANBU. public transport in the UK is ridiculously expensive. Yet another triumph for deregulation and privatisation.

But that assumes that people either use public transport or they run a car. It's brilliant if people switch entirely to public transport, but we need car owners to use public transport some of the time too if we're going to cut emissions and air pollution from private car use.

It's a 10 minute bus ride into my nearest little town. It costs £2.60 for an adult and £1.30 for a child if you don't use the app, so £5.20 for me and my dc, compared to a four quid cab. It would be £4 with the app though. My area has stated doing pound buses after 7 o'clock, so all journeys are a quid which is great value. We don't drive so if we're having a full day out we buy a day saver deal which allows unlimited travel on buses and trains in the area for up to 2 adults and 3 kids for £14, which I thought was quite good.
It's quite hard to tell when you've never bought, maintained and run a car.

I think it’s interesting actually because you’re right for most people it’s not car or bus all the time but bus is an occasional option that prices make unattractive. Councils do have choices here, they justify subsidies for car parking because retailers fear people won’t visit town without this. Brighton took the decision to make car parking very expensive and subsidised an excellent bus service, and there it’s a no brainer, buses are quicker and cheaper for most people, making car ownership a luxury, London is similar.

ive read my local transport plan (because that’s how I roll) and the premise is that quite soon the town will become so congested that it will have an economic impact so designing a system where buses are quicker is going to be desirable. This was pre-Covid and there’s little sign of buses becoming preferred transport option. In this plan villages were excluded.

Parking in our City Centre is pretty extortionate now, so we wouldn't be able to drive in and park and drive out again for less than the bus BUT I agree with a couple of previous posters that , when you are looking at that one day, you have already paid all the fixed costs for your car - the cost of buying it / depreciation...tax...insurance. The decision on the day is whether you are prepared to pay out far more than the petrol and parking would cost you, to do your bit for the environment by paying for the bus / train.

We live very close to the train station, and it would be much more relaxing to go into City Centre on the train, but the cost is too high for it to be a serious consideration most of the time.

Brighton took the decision to make car parking very expensive and subsidised an excellent bus service, and there it’s a no brainer, buses are quicker and cheaper for most people, making car ownership a luxury, London is similar.

Brighton is my nearest city, @wonderstuff . It was my go to when I needed to buy clothes, books, household stuff etc. There is a bus service between Brighton and my small town, but it doesn't go anywhere near where I live and the local buses are so infrequent that they're practically useless (there's a 2.5 hour gap in service in the afternoon, when the bus is being a school bus).

When Brighton introduced bus lanes and a bizarre traffic system that sends you all round the houses to get from A to B, it took so long to get there that it was quicker to drive 3 times the distance to a different big town, where the parking costs are so much lower that it more than covers the extra fuel.

I mentioned this to a neighbour and to a couple of friends who live in the same part of town as me, and they all said that they simply can't be arsed to go into Brighton any more, because it takes so long and the parking is so expensive. Soon, the only people who shop in Brighton will be those who live there.

Until public transport is more comprehensive in rural and semi-rural areas, they will never get cars off the roads.

This is another issue, lots of places don’t have good connections, and I guess a consequence of buses being a local council issue is that councils will primarily look at there own area and be less bothered about connecting to others. I lived in Falmer as a student and then about 2 miles from central Brighton and the buses and trains were fantastic. I drove down a few years ago (from Hampshire where I now live) and it was a nightmare, I’d only take the train now. which is the reaction the council are hoping for. If buses are well used they become more economic. Public transport in more rural areas is always going to be more difficult.