Fare Dealer
RAIL fares expert Barry Doe says less jargon and more clarity is required at ticket machines.
PLUSBUS has been around for some 14 years now, and has evolved to cover 290 rail-linked towns outside London - even including the Isle of Man (via Heysham/Liverpool ferries to Douglas) and several towns in Northern Ireland.
The service offers unlimited bus travel for a day over a wide area from the origin station or the destination (or both), at rates that are cheaper than would be available from the bus operators locally. Season tickets are also available.
Trams are also included in Birmingham, Blackpool, Edinburgh, Nottingham and Sheffield - although, except for Birmingham and Sheffield, not the whole systems are available. For full details see www.plusbus.info.
PLUSBUS can be bought at stations, online and from some ticket machines. They can only be bought in conjunction with a rail ticket into the required area.
If you have a period return you can buy for the outward day and also for the return day you select. You can buy the PLUSBUS tickets after you’ve bought the rail ticket, but only from stations by showing that ticket - you can never have PLUSBUS tickets without a rail ticket.
So, for example, if you had an Off-Peak Return from Newton Abbot to Southend, dated for outward travel Friday, it would be valid a month.
Say you decided you’d return Monday. You could buy four PLUSBUS day tickets to accompany this ticket: for Newton Abbot on Friday (£2.60); Southend on Friday and Monday (£3.30 each day); and Newton Abbot again for Monday. Of course, if you were uncertain about the return journey you could buy PLUSBUS for that day later.
If you have a railcard, you would get 34% off the PLUSBUS ticket (and no minimum fares
apply). Note that in July and August most PLUSBUS tickets are on offer for £2, but only if you buy them online.
Sometimes the area covered is far larger than might be expected. For example, the Newton Abbot PLUSBUS area covers to Brixham and Kingswear. However, remember that’s only for buses, and you couldn’t travel by train from Paignton. For that, you’d have to buy the rail ticket to/from Paignton.
One thing that has now been clarified is the huge areas covered in Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, West Midlands and West Yorkshire (but not Merseyside or Tyne & Wear).
These areas have many PLUSBUS towns within them. For example, within Greater Manchester you can buy a Bolton PLUSBUS ticket or a Stockport PLUSBUS ticket for £3.70. As usual you must buy the one that matches your rail ticket.
However, in these cases the PLUSBUS areas are the same and cover the whole of Greater Manchester by bus - from Bolton and Wigan across to Stalybridge and Stockport and down to Manchester Airport.
Note your origin must be outside Greater Manchester - you can’t, for example, buy Bolton to Stockport PLUSBUS.