Last week, West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker waded in to the furore surrounding the increase in the single fare price due to take effect at the start of next month. He basically launched his propaganda campaign to get people onside with his bus franchising plan, and I felt he was being a bit ‘dishonest’ and disingenuous.

Since 2023, it is true that after getting all bus operators to adopt the nBus ticket as ‘standard’ for day/week/month tickets, Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) do have control over their pricing, and for regular passengers they are much better value than buying individual single tickets per journey.
Now I’m happy to be corrected if I am wrong, but I have always been under the impression that for several years, even prior to the ticket changes last year, it was TfWM who determined the ‘maximum single fare’ that operators could charge for journeys within the West Midlands region. And this was done in consultation with all bus operators, though undoubtedly with National Express (NX Bus) being the ‘dominant’ operator in the area, they clearly had the most say in the matter. But that didn’t stop other operators from charging the same price too.
Other operators were of course free to charge their passengers a lower fare if they wished, and some did, in order to try and compete with the likes of NX to win custom over.
However in recent years with operational costs increasing, operators are less reluctant to do so, and we’ve seen the gradual disappearance of ‘short-hop’ fares, as they no longer cover operators’ costs.
The UK Government introduced a “£2 cap on single bus fares” as part of its Help For Household scheme, so bus passengers only paid a maximum of £2, with the government paying bus operators the shortfall of whatever single fare would normally be charged.
Now, where I think Mr Parker is being disingenuous is that TfWM increased the maximum single fare price to £2.90 earlier this year in June, when other nBus tickets increased in price.
That of course disappeared under most peoples’ radars, as the Government fare cap still applied.
I pointed out that this is what would happen back in October:
In recent weeks, National Express were the first operator to announce that the price of a single fare would increase to £2.90, as a result of the fare cap increasing, but Mr Parker ably abetted by the unquestioning media launched a ‘pile-on’, with dozens of furious comments being left on news articles.
Mr Parker took the opportunity to say that he was “disappointed” by the fare increase, and has pretty much promised that under a ‘franchised network’ he will be able to “keep fares low”, like Andy Burnham has done in Manchester.
I noted with interest that Mr Parker has had no sly digs at Diamond, Stagecoach, Arriva, Landflight, Kevs* and other bus operators who will be following suit and offering a £2.90 single fare.
In my opinion, Mr Parker is scapegoating our bus operators for this price increase, when the reality is that it is because of the new Labour government’s renewal of the fare cap scheme at the higher rate of £3.00.
Of course, the “fares and passes over which we have control” already increased in price back in June, along with the TfWM max single fare, one of the first things that Mr Parker actioned after he won the mayoral election in May.
Hopefully he’s not being deliberately dishonest, but I will be watching what he says like a hawk from now on
* Correction: it’s been pointed out in a comment below that Kevs will be charging £2.40 for a single fare, not £2.90.
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