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Paul Corfield · December 5th 08, 07:01 PM posted to uk.transport.london,uk.railway

On Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:43:25 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

On Fri, 5 Dec 2008 06:28:46 -0800 (PST), John B
wrote:

Buses are different. $deity knows why, although my guess would be
technical implementation reasons rather than an ideological dislike of
mixed-mode bus-rail journey.

Even between buses it doesn't give a discount, though. Surely it
would be logical to allow a second free touch-in on a bus if the
previous one was less than, say, an hour ago? That can't be hard to
implement.

It might be logical but it would also cost a great deal of money in
terms of lost revenue. Hong Kong operators have used service cuts to
remove through services where a bus to bus interchange can be put in
place to give little or no financial penalty from changing buses. They
tend to run without fare subsidy so that sort of change to services is
needed to "finance" the lost revenue.

It's possible that over time ridership increases would compensate for
the lost revenue but it would still require short term funding. I
believe New York ended up with more revenue overall a few years after it
implemented free transfer (on PAYG Metrocard) between Subway and Bus to
give one fare for a through journey using both modes. TfL simply doesn't
have the cash to fund such a fundamental change. The other risk would
be that if ridership really did accelerate off the back of that fare
initiative that costs of providing contracted bus services would
increase thus making the cost impacts greater. I'm ignoring the benefit
side of the equation for now.
--
Paul C