Family friendly fares
Residents from Central and North Headington Residents’ Association have asked me if I can find out what the policy is of the major bus companies to developing a family friendly fare policy which would encourage families to use the bus to the city centre, rather than their cars.
Here is the response I received from Stefan Soanes, the Business Development Manager, at the Oxford Bus Company - do feel free to post comments above!
Thank you for your recent email regarding family friendly fare structures.
We look long and hard at ways in which we can promote bus travel to everyone, not just families and friends, and with this in mind I can offer the following for you as feedback to your residents.
We offer a family or group ticket on our local bus services which is valid for 24 hours. This means that up to 2 adults and 3 children can travel anywhere within Zone A for £7. So, if a family of 4 (2 adults and 2 children) wanted to travel from Headington to Oxford and back again this would cost £8.40 if purchasing standard day return tickets. The zone A family/group ticket costs £7 thus saving them £1.40 or around 16% off the standard day return price.
Another factor to consider is that our key smart card products are transferable. So, if husband/partner uses the card in the day to travel to work his wife/partner could use it in the evening (when husband/partner is not) to travel into Oxford to meet friends, for example.
From 3rd August we will be introducing a new product aimed at those 18 & under which will allow them to make savings of around 33% on a range of time based zone passes.
We also offer seniors discounted travel, with savings of around 50% on our airline and espress coach services,
I hope this is of some use to you and if any of your residents has ideas or suggestions on this subject then I would love to hear of them.
