Bus passengers in West Leeds will soon be able to pay for their bus tickets with contactless payment options.
New ticket machines have been installed on all First West Yorkshire buses ahead ahead of the launch in Leeds, Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield from 18th January.
Paul Matthews, Managing Director of First West Yorkshire, said:
“The introduction of contactless payments alongside our success with mobile ticketing is pivotal as we continue to make bus travel a convenient, simple and attractive experience for our customers.
“Use of mTickets is exceeding our expectations and continues to grow daily, so I fully expect customers to welcome and grasp contactless bus travel with the same enthusiasm.
“If more customers converted to using mTickets, contactless or the Mcard, then this would have a huge impact on boarding times and would help us in the battle to speed up the bus.”
Contactless is a simple and secure way to pay for bus travel without needing cash. It can be used to buy any paper tickets up to the value of £30. Payment cards displaying the contactless logo from Visa, Mastercard or Maestro logo can be used. Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and bPay are also accepted.
What do you think? Will this initiative encourage you to use the bus? Have your say in the comments below.
The mTicket app has a rating of 2.3 out of 5 on Google Play, and it hasn’t been updated since April 2017, nine months ago.
I tried it a couple of years ago and my ticket disappeared so I never used it again. Judging by recent comments at Google Play this is still occurring.
Too many bus stops – you can often see the next one from the one you are already at. Not saying remove them but we need express services on many routes with limited stops. Is it necessary for the buses on Armley Town Street to stop at the Moor – Dennison Hall Club – Town Street and then just round the corner opposite the Yorkshire Bank? Surely two of those stops could be missed on an Express service – probably Town Street on its own would serve perfectly well. Of course they won’t do that – just tinkering at the edges as usual.
what would get more people on the bus would be if the stopped cancelling buses ran to the timetable which they fail to do even on Sunday morning and Sunday nights
While faster boarding times are welcome, it will take a lot more than just tinkering with tickets to get people onto buses, which are considered by most to be a low quality form of transport. In most European cities the size of Leeds, there is an extensive light rail system tightly integrated with local buses, regional trains and regional buses through a single zonal ticket system. It would have rail based transport at its core with buses playing a feeder role over shorter distances. The question needs to be ‘how do we get more people onto public transport’, because the question ‘how do we get more people into buses’ assumes that buses are an adequate alternative to the car, which they are not. As long as we have a grossly over-priced, low quality means of transport like the bus in a city the size of Leeds run in the current shareholder- focussed way, we will never break the over-reliance on cars.