Fuel costs hit FirstGroup profits "For the six months to the end of September, the UK's largest bus company and one of the biggest operators of yellow school buses in the US delivered pre-tax profits of £55.3m compared with £64.3m for the same period a year ago."

Although the site Passenger Focus is for rail passengers, and not buses, they do however deserve a mention for campaigning for a better train service.

Jobs @ First

Position: Driver
Area: Leeds

If you are looking for a new career?
If you like meeting people and think you can handle a large vehicle?
Then you could be just the person we are looking for.

You don’t necessarily need a clean driving licence and we will give you the training needed to drive a bus.

We offer excellent conditions of service:
Free uniform
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Free Travel for your partner and your family
A pension scheme


Anyone else worried that you don't need a clean driving licence to operate a bus?!

Tom from amateur ramblings made this very interesting comment which warrants blogging
It is misleading of Mr Harris to suggest that the factors indicated should have any great effect on the cost of tickets. The company in fact pays an agreed price for purchasing it's fuel, so fuel-price rises should not affect the company in the short term. Yet in some areas, fares have risen four times in a year. Firstbus state that it's insurance costs have risen by 89% in five years - maybe if it maintained it's buses properly (famously, a few summers ago, wheels fell of TWO buses in Bristol) or didn't have to employ Eastern European drivers (who are sometimes paid less then other drivers) because of recruitment difficulties, it's insurance would have remained lower. Firstgroup have a £130 million defecit in the pension fund (across the whole group) and are trying to force through a new deal without consultation with the union.

Firstbus makes £50000 profit every day, and do invest in new vehicles (mainly on city centre routes; however, they do operate many early morning, evening and weekend services with subsidy, and like many operators, use blackmail to secure these additional funds - they tell the council that provides the (taxpayers) money that if there was to be a cut in funding, they will stop running the subsidised services.

£3.30 a day is clearly a ridiculous amount to charge for such a dirty and unreliable service, and is actually forcing people back into cars.

Following my recent complaint, I was awarded a two week bus pass but i sent it back; even with free bus travel on offer, I would still choose to pay £2 a day to go by train.

Here is the reply I received to my complaint

Dear Ms Dawes

We very much regret having to pass on to our customers the cost rises we
are now facing. However, the rises in fuel, utilities, insurance and
pensions are such that we cannot absorb them. The transport sector has
been badly affected by these rises and you will be aware of rises in train
fares and other bus companies both within First Group and outside of the
Group who all presumably are facing similar cost problems.

With regard to Service X84, our boundary for the Leeds off-peak ticket is
as far as possible to the Leeds Metropolitan boundary which obviously does
include Otley. However Ilkley is within Bradford and so inevitably will be
outside the Leeds ticket. Obviously there will always be issues around
boundaries and if we extended the boundary further then the off-peak ticket
would need to priced higher which would not be in the interest of the vast
majority of people using this particular ticket.

With regards to your comment regarding train fares, the simple difference
is that bus fares are charged at a commercial rate in most cases without
any subsidy whatsoever, where as train fares are very heavily subsidised.
In some cases the subsidy is 5 times the price to the passenger.

Yours sincerely




Mr R Harris
COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR

I sent this complaint to Firstbus:

I regularly use the X84 bus service and it must be one of the most unreliable and expensive bus journey in the UK. Either the buses are late or often they just don't turn up! To add further stress the bus prices are abominable. My journey takes 15 minutes (from just outside Otley to Ilkley) and is roughly 5 miles long so why does it cost me £3.30 a day? How can this represent value for money? Why does it cost the same price to travel to either Ilkley or Leeds (off peak = £1.50) when Leeds is alot further away? You won't allow people travelling from Otley to Ilkley to buy a FirstDay off peak fare as Otley isn't classed as in the Leeds area. Funny how there's a sign which welcomes drivers to Otley and Leeds, just down the road from my house. Whilst travelling in Manchester on the buses one can purchase a weekly ticket for as little as £2.00. I can only get a one way ticket for this price on one of your buses. Why is your smelly, noisy bus service now alot more expensive than the quick and clean trains?

As if the bus service couldn't get any worse the ticket price goes up again today. An off peak fare for me one way costs £1.50, a peak fare one costs £2.00 and a dayrider costs £3.30. The "cheapest" way for me to travel each day is buying a dayrider as I often make two peak fare journeys. The smelly, noisy bus service is now alot more expensive than the local quick and clean trains.