With locals and visitors facing a diminishing amount of free parking and ever increasing volumes of cars using our roads, many who’ve never contemplated bus travel before are considering it as a serious alternative for travel in and around Bournemouth and Poole.
Today, the average car owner can expect to pay out £2,300* per annum for their vehicle, which covers expenses such road tax, insurance, repairs, fines, MOT and fuel.
Added to this annual running cost are daily parking charges. If they’re not provided with off road parking at their place of work, employees can now expect to pay generously 6 to 10 hours parking in a long stay car park in Bournemouth. Depending on which car park is used it can add up to £75 a week to vehicle running costs which works out at an additional £3,450 per annum in parking costs, based on an average 46 weeks, working 5 days a week.
By switching from car to bus, motorists can potentially reduce monthly travel costs to just £52 a month with a 30 day Zone A period pass ticket for example. This ticket offers 30 days unlimited travel in and around Bournemouth and Poole for just £1.73 a day and is valid for 30 consecutive days.
For unlimited bus travel when you need it there are also 5, 10 and 20 day multi-day bundles. Available exclusively on ‘theKey’ (which is a plastic card that can be credited with bus travel credits and is presented when you board the bus), the multi-day bundle offers unlimited travel with no restrictions on usage so you can travel as much as you like, whenever you like.
Not only is catching the bus a more cost effective option to running a car, it’s also better for the environment. Bus operator Morebus acknowledges that it’s a difficult decision making the switch from bus to car travel, however making that decision for just one day a week can have a significant impact on your carbon footprint. One full double decker bus can potentially take up to 75 cars off the road every day, reducing harmful emissions and congestion.
The operator recently invested £7.2 million into sustainable transport in Bournemouth and Poole with the brand new ADL Enviro 200 MMC buses using greener, cleaner Euro 6 engines which can produce fewer emissions than a brand new car despite having up to 10 times the capacity.
With many buses now offering USB phone charging points and WIFI, bus travel can offer commuters a more relaxed and stress-free route to work and home.
For many years bus travel was perhaps seen as a poor relation to travelling by car, but now with the modern buses containing all the mod-cons and with rising costs for car owners, the case for using the bus might have just got stronger.
*As calculated in a poll of 2000 UK motorists by Autoeurope.