{"id":691,"date":"2010-07-25T14:36:57","date_gmt":"2010-07-25T13:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/?p=691"},"modified":"2010-07-25T16:11:55","modified_gmt":"2010-07-25T15:11:55","slug":"child-fares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/?p=691","title":{"rendered":"Child fares"},"content":{"rendered":"

What an area of confusion! It seems that every bus company has different definitions of ‘child’ or ‘young person’! Here are some local child\/young person definitions.
\nStagecoach<\/a> – 5 to 15 years
\nFirst<\/a> – 5 to 15 years
\nTransdev Yellow Buses<\/a> – 5 to 14 years (extended to 18 for holders of Citizen Cards)
\nWilts and Dorset<\/a> – 7 to 18
\nBluestar<\/a> – ? to 15
\nSouthern Vectis<\/a> – are in a category of their own! This Southern Vectis link is out of date according to BBC News<\/a> which reports that the Student Rider tickets are to be scrapped from 1 September. The report appears to suggest that child fares on Southern Vectics are only for up to 13 years of age when writing “However, according to the youth council, without the discounted ticket child rates only apply to under 14s, so everyone else would have to pay a full adult fare, which is currently \u00c2\u00a33.50 per single journey.” Oddly Southern Vectis allow 50% discount if you have an NUS card. Pay full fare for the last 3 years of secondary education, full fare through College, but only half fare when you’re at University!<\/p>\n

Monday is the first week of the school summer holidays. Every school holiday, for as long as I can remember, Stagecoach have the same ‘promotion’ offering under 16’s a Day Gold for \u00c2\u00a32.00 allowing unlimited travel within the Stagecoach South network. I placed the word promotion in quotes because I fail to see how it promotes travel and the use of Stagecoach! What it does achieve extremely effectively is to reduce income for Stagecoach! By offering it every school holiday the kids know it’s available and most purchasers are this years school leavers (now 16) who you were carrying last week on Students passes! There is no requirement that proof of age needs to be carried in order to buy this bargain basement ticket, it’s up to the driver to make a decision. Maybe the driver would query one travelling youngster who appeared to be over 15, but mostly they are in groups so it’s simply not worth the hassle and arguments which result. Because the stakes are pretty high those at College (their term passes expired on Friday) also try for the \u00c2\u00a32.00 child Day Gold – an adult return fare can be up to \u00c2\u00a36.30, and that just gets you there and back. A Day Gold can get you there, somewhere else as many times as you like, and then back for \u00c2\u00a32.00 all without proof of age being required. <\/p>\n

Worst of all, every youngster asking for a \u00c2\u00a32.00 Day Gold will have nothing other than a \u00c2\u00a320 note with which to pay. Roll on September!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What an area of confusion! It seems that every bus company has different definitions of ‘child’ or ‘young person’! Here are some local child\/young person definitions. Stagecoach – 5 to 15 years First – 5 to 15 years Transdev Yellow Buses – 5 to 14 years (extended to 18 for holders of Citizen Cards) Wilts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=691"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":704,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691\/revisions\/704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}