Bus companies 'sneak up fares' after being promised millions in subsidies

Passengers in West Yorkshire now pay no more than £2 for a single fare and they can make an unlimited number of journeys for £4.50 a day by buying a DaySaver ticket on the MCard App.

It comes after Ms Brabin promised to hand operators £37m so they can subsidise fares for passengers who are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.

However, the Labour mayor has revealed that some operators “are using this as an opportunity to sneak up fares on previously cheaper routes”.

Arriva Yorkshire has been criticised, after it raised the cost of a short-distance single journey by 10p, to £1.50, and added 20p to fares for one-mile trips, which previously cost £1.80.

The company has also announced slight increases in the price of some weekly passes and certain four-week tickets.

“Let me be clear - these price increases by operators are not to pay for the new £2 fare cap. We are reimbursing them for this,” said Ms Brabin.

“I’ll be taking this issue up with operators as a matter of urgency.

“My Mayor's Fares will make bus travel cheaper and simpler across West Yorkshire, and I want all passengers to feel the benefit."

A spokeswoman for Arriva said the company is doing “everything we can to keep fares low” for passengers.

She added: “Like most businesses, our costs continue to increase and we postponed the introduction of increases so that they coincided with reductions on the MCard Day Ticket which offers great value for all day travel across all operators for £4.50.

“We do however acknowledge that further advance notification of these changes would have been beneficial for our customers.’

Ms Brabin has decided to subsidise fares by using more than half of the £69.9m of Government funding, which will be given to West Yorkshire Combined Authority to support its Bus Service Improvement Plan.

The rest will be spent on upgrading the bus network and making services more frequent and more reliable.

Operators across the country claim they have been struggling with rising costs, staff shortages and a drop in passenger numbers during the pandemic.

However, the Government recently promised another £130m of pandemic support, to protect services until March.

That means around £2bn has been provided during the pandemic.