Sheffield buses: Most expensive bus fare in city will soon be nearly twice as much as in Manchester

Single bus journeys within Greater Manchester will be capped at £2 for adults and £1 for children from September 4, after the region was awarded £94.8 million of Government funding under the Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP).

Within Sheffield, the most expensive single fare for tickets bought on board is understood to be £3.50, which is how much passengers pay, for example, to get Stagecoach’s number 57 service from Sheffield city centre to Stocksbridge.

Tickets are cheaper if bought in advance online and, according to Stagecoach, its most common single fare for journeys within Sheffield is £2.20.

But the fact Sheffielders could be paying nearly twice as much as bus passengers in Manchester will further fuel concerns the city gets a raw deal when it comes to public transport.

The former South Yorkshire mayor Dan Jarvis and council leaders across the county had applied for Government funding for their own Bus Service Improvement Plan, which included proposals to cap daily and weekly fares.

How does the cost of a daily bus pass in Greater Manchester compare with South Yorkshire?

But while South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) was handed £570 million for transport improvements, including £100 million to renew the Supertram network, there was nothing for its Bus Services Improvement Plan – leading Mr Jarvis to complain that ministers had ‘shafted’ South Yorkshire.

Powell’s Bus recently went into administration and there are fears more bus services could be lost in South Yorkshire, though the Department for Transport (DfT) this month announced up to £130 million of Government funding for bus operators to protect vital services across England.

As well as a £2 cap on single fares, passengers in Greater Manchester – which encompasses 10 councils including Bolton, Bury, Stockport and Wigan, and has a population of more than 2.8 million – will be able to buy a day pass allowing them to travel on any bus within the area for £5.

The equivalent SYConnect Day ticket, which allows passengers to travel on any service across South Yorkshire – which incorporates Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, and has a population around half that of Greater Manchester – costs £7.40, though it does include travel on trams as well as buses.

A spokeswoman for Stagecoach said: “We have a range of different adult single fares in Sheffield for different journeys from £1 to £3.50 with the most common single fare being £2.20 within Sheffield.”

A SYMCA spokesperson said: “Communities have told us that bus companies’ complicated and rising fares are hitting the pockets of people that rely on services hardest.

“Our Bus Service Improvement Plan sets out a strong ambition to cap fares for all passengers – and while South Yorkshire did not get the National Bus Strategy funding to put a fare cap in place, like other regions, we are still looking at all options to progress this and make bus travel more affordable.”

They added that while operators are responsible for setting fares, the latest data showed that around 55 per cent of fares were at or below £2.

What have bus passengers in Sheffield said about cost of travel?

Several passengers described how they paid £2.20 – which is more than the incoming fare cap for the whole of Greater Manchester – to travel just a few stops within Sheffield.

One person told how they coughed up that much to travel from the KFC on Queens Road to the bottom of The Moor in Sheffield city centre, describing it as ‘daylight robbery’.

Another passenger said walk-on fares for First buses were ‘very expensive’ and they had paid £3 to travel just two miles before but they now use the First Bus App on which you can buy 10 single tickets for £20.

A third bus user reminisced about the golden days of bus travel in South Yorkshire, writing: “Oh for the days when, if it rained, we’d pile onto the back seat of the no 17 and for 2p each travel a big circle from the Cross to Totley via town, then back via Hillsborough and Ecclesfield.”

The Star also contacted the bus operator First.