Single Ticket
Single tickets are available which can be used to
bring friends home from school, travel occasionally in the afternoon
when you are a morning-only passenger, that sort of thing.
They cost £5 each, and are valid for one trip only. If you wanted
to use the bus in the morning and afternoon you would need two
tickets costing £10 in total.
Update, extracted from
e-mail circulated to parents on 16th February 2010:
With the help of the driver I conducted a survey of paid
passengers boarding the bus in the afternoon over a two week period
in January and February 2010. The figures obtained have given me
confidence to be more relaxed about single tickets for the rest of
this school year. We will revert to allowing children to bring home
guests in the afternoon without checking with me first. This is what
we will do…..
- Parents who wish to make use of single tickets should
purchase a few in advance. I suggest your order two or more now
so you have them on hand when you need them. Tickets are £5
each. Please do this some days in advance to allow the tickets
to be posted to you. Why not do it today?
- When you want to make use of the bus for guests, there is no
need to “reserve” an afternoon seat in advance. Instead, please
send me an e-mail with the date and number of guests, and I’ll
keep my own tally. I’ll only contact parents back if the tally
has reached too large a number – but I don’t think we’ll ever do
that. I just need to be kept informed (and therefore in
control).
- If your child is in the habit of phoning up from school and
asking to bring a friend home that day, then please ensure they
carry a guest ticket with them all the time. I find it difficult
to deal with the requests which reach me at work to try and sort
out a guest seat for that afternoon. Please still send an e-mail
though, just to keep me informed.
- If you wish to have a guest on the bus in the morning,
please still check with me at least one day in advance.
This system should see us through until the end of the summer
term. We’ll have to do something different next year because the bus
will be full. (I currently have 13 children on the waiting list).
But we’ll talk about this at the parents’ meeting on the 27th.
The situation we have to avoid next year is the bus reaching
Headington or Rye, with the last children getting on the bus and
finding there is no seat. At that stage Tappins will not drive
anywhere – they will phone me, and someone will have to go and pick
up several children in their car. At the best I will be one hour
away, possibly more. I think you’ll understand why I am so keen to
avoid this happening.
Plans for September 2010:
The current plan is to withdraw these tickets from September 2010
as the bus will be full. There tend to be afternoon spaces due to
activities, but we can not work out a robust plan to use single
tickets which might not back fire in Health & Safety issues.