Bus operators seem to differ in their rules for pass users before 0930 some charge full fare and others half fare. Some operators issue tickets whilst others don't. How many pass users have paid a fare not realising that they only need pay for the part before 0930. As others have stated some operators do allow pass users on before 0930 and allow them to swipe their pass at the allotted time which is all dependent on the operators rules & the drivers mood on the day.
Are SCC‡ already making money out of pass users by not making it clear to them that they only need to pay for the part of their journey before 0930.
Or in summary - "when you change from one fare regime to another that differs significantly at a time when there are lots of people travelling, you have a mess".
9 O'Clock for bus pass acceptance was for the most part early enough for there not to be lots of
ENCTS▸ passengers already on services when it clicked in - up until then, the buses had been running services / routes to get the young ones to school and the middle aged ones to work, and the old ones had learned even before bus passes that the young ones were a noisy lot and best avoided (and that the buses went to schools not shops that early).
Half an hour doesn't feel very long - but an awful lot of ENCTS (local council extension) passengers used to get on those services where I live in that 30 minutes. That 30 minutes of passengers was essentially paid for by the local rather than the central taxpayer, and comprised not only the passenger's travel during those 30 minutes, but also the continuation of their journey beyond 09:30 on the same vehicle. A journey at 09:25 from the local Market Place into the city, arriving there 10:15 was fully paid by the local council, even though 95% of it was at a time that central government would have picked up the bill. And to add insult to injury, ENCTS passengers joining that same bus at 09:36 at the Sports Centre (after their early morning kick boxing lesson, perhaps?) were fully paid by central government.
Personally, I have answered the cry of "It's not fair - I can't use the bus before 09:30 any more" with an unwelcome response ... "it's perfectly fair - you can use the bus, you just have to pay
just like the rest of us rather than having me pay for your travel through my taxes" - but that's not an answer which endears me to the person I'm talking with, and the same answer from a politician seeking that person's vote would likely mean the loss of that vote.
The immediate result of moving the 09:00 to 09:30 in many parts was that ENCTS passengers who had joined the buses evenly through the hour abandoned the first half hour and clumped in the second half hour - so a bus at 09:15 ran near-empty and the following bus at 09:45 turned people away. A nightmare for the bus operators, as they had a wasted resource for 30 minutes, followed by one that was so busy they had to either turn people away (loss of income) or put on a bigger bus (spend more) than was previously the case.
I like the "Faresaver Solution" of charging ENCTS holders a half fare if they join between 09:00 and 09:30 (and I think it applies earlier too?). As the payment from county or centre for an ENCTS journey is essentially similar to a child's fare, it means that the bus company is in the same position financially as it was before the change of ENCTS start time from 09:00 to 09:30 - with the fare being paid by the traveller and not by the local council. The bus company comes out smelling of roses for a concession which hasn't actually cost them anything, and there' understanding by the passengers of the need for government to save money - it's viewed as a reasonable compromise by all, even though in practical terms the ENCTS pass holder is actually paying now, and taxpayer support is down.
Joining the bus and just going up to "swipe" at 09:30 is probably against the rules. The passenger's travelling without a ticket (and indeed without intention to pay for that part of the journey) - a loss of income for the bus operator, except that when they go up and swipe the council can then charge the central government pot for the shorter journey from that point, which is likely to translate as the same flat fare anyway under ENCTS tallying.
Within the rules and to pay the minimum required from his/her pocket, the ENCTS passenger wishing to start his/her journey prior to 09:30 should buy a ticket to the first stop after 09:30, then get off the bus at that stop, join the queue and rejoin the bus, swiping in for a central funded taxpayer journey. And, yes, a lot of bus companies and passengers go through that procedure. It may be mighty dangerous if the bus stop called at at 09:31 is in a country lane and was OK for the one or two occasional users, but not for 30 people milling about to split their journey. It also slows the journey don while the pantomime of getting off and back on is performed.
Thank yo for reading this far - and sorry that (after all of that) I'm not proposing a solution. Hopefully it clarifies for you (it certainly did for me as I wrote it) just what the knock-on effects are / have been of changing from 09:00 to 09:30. I feel that many of the elected councillors who have made the decision to change from 09:00 to 09:30 took the decision purely to remove the local payment element of ENCTS passengers from their budgets, without giving proper/much/any consideration to the very serious side effects their decision would have. The side effects were predictable, but where there's the attraction of more money in the till, were they going to care about side effects on a service they probably don't use very much if at all?
