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Fares on Britain’s most scenic bus route are at risk of rising by £20 as a result of planned funding cuts in Rachel Reeves’s Budget.

A one-way ticket on the Coastliner 840 from Leeds to Whitby via the North York Moors has been pegged at £2 since January last year, spurring a surge in passenger numbers.

However, with the England-wide cap expected to become a casualty of the Chancellor’s spending clampdown later this month, prices on the route could hit £25 for a return ticket, based on the original price and allowing for inflation, up from £4 today.

Such a significant increase could kill off a boom in tourists drawn to the 840 by its moorland views, undermining the viability of a route that was earmarked for closure before the fare cap was introduced in 2023.

Why would we want to subsidise toursits?

17 thoughts on “Good”

  1. Surely if keeping fares at £4 increases viability, that would be the logical action of the operator – so they wouldn’t increase them at £25.

    What I think they mean is that, fares are £25 now, of which the government pays £21 – which might be very viable for the bus operator, but rather less so for the government.

  2. Hey, that’s my bus! Jeez, they’re comparing a *one-way* £2 ticket with the normal *return* ticket. Morons. They should be comparing the £2 with the normal £12 fare. Which is still a bargain for almost 100 mile journey. It’s 40+ quid on the train.

    Yeah, only tourists would by buying a return ticket. Normal people buy a single ‘cos they’re going somewhere.

    My only complaint about the 840 is they buggered up the timetable so now it leaves Whitby 30 minutes later, so it no longer meets up with the National Express in Leeds, so is now useless to me. I now have to trek to Scarborough to catch a train. Which, as I mentioned, is more than £40.

  3. N York Moors – v attractive. Whitby – also lovely and v good fish & chips.

    Why anyone would need a subsidy to enjoy the trip Lord knows.

  4. The only reason you apply a subsidy for tourists is if you might be able to make more back in other ways (e.g. you subsidise an arts festival and the town fills hotels and restaurants). It’s probably worth the town of Bayreuth spending a little to keep the Wagner festival going because of this. Opera goers are going to eat and stay in the town.

    A bit like that thing of malls giving cheap rent to Apple stores because of all the customers they bring in for other stores.

    You have to be careful with this though. Because everyone will say “host a festival=get tourists” and well, some things, people just go home and don’t spend much money. Also, if Whitby is benefitting, Whitby can subsidise the fares,

  5. Why would we want to subsidise toursits?
    You might do if you’re looking at the entire economy of an area rather than just one aspect of it. You have to look at two things. How much people will pay to have access to somewhere. How much they will spend whilst they’re there. People tend to look at the two things differently. The access cost is up front. People can’t be sure how much they’ll benefit by paying it. Set the price too high & you deter your punters. However people tend to spend if they’re having a good time. And the better the time, the more they spend. Since your costs don’t rise in proportion to the numbers of punters you become more profitable up the curve. So yes, it can be worth subsidising the access.
    It’s something I have difficulty explaining here, where people have trouble thinking past how much you can make out one individual transaction to how much you can make out of an optimum volume of commerce. They want to make the maximum profit out of selling the punter a drink. I would give the punter his drink free & his subsequent drinks. It would cost me virtually nothing. Under 1€/drink. But drunk guys can can spend a lot of money. I don’t just want some of their money. I want all of it & when they’ve run out they can go to the ATM for more.

  6. If you want to use the post as worked example, you’d need to know how much it costs to run the bus. Since the photo shows a double decker how many seats are there? Long time time since I took a bus. 60? I can’t believe it costs £1500 to do a 100 mile round trip. So what’s the normal occupation at £4/ticket? What’s the occupation going to be at £25/ticket. Drops far enough, it might require more subsidy at 25 than it does at 4.

  7. Fuel consumption of a double-decker over the NYM is going to be shocking. Bus cos get a rebate on VAT I believe, so £1.20/litre, call it £1/mile in fuel, £100.
    Half a day of a bus driver. £100.
    Lease/capital cost of bus: £10k/year assuming it’s an older bus. 2 journeys per day minus time out for maintenance, thinner Sunday schedule, etc. say 500 journeys/year. £200.
    Maintenance: £5k/year. £100.
    Insurance, overheads etc. let’s say another £100.
    Cost of operation: £600 per round-trip. Hardly any seats in a bus downstairs any more because of wheelchair regs. 75 pax total maybe, so £8 return to break even if the bus is full.

  8. Economics of tourism:

    In Whitby the infrastructure concentrates on day trippers. There’s a park&ride that closes and kicks people out at 8pm, so you can’t use it for multi-day stays, so it’s only useful for day visiters. I rarely see people with suitcases on the 840, so it is also mostly day trippers.

    Day trippers don’t pay hotel fees, they mainly spend in the local shops. So, the shop keepers can afford to pay the Business Rates which goes to Westminster, and their income tax which goes to Westminster.

    The multi-day stay has been moving overwhelming away from B&Bs and hotels and into holiday cottages. The sort of people who stay their stock up with food at home and bring it with them, and tend to be the “explorer” types that buzz around the surrounding countryside looking at the scenery, and going to tea shops. So, they don’t spend much money locally, and most of the holiday lets are owned by outsiders, so the letting profit goes outside.

    We spend on holding a winter festival which brings in spenders, and try and ensure the stall holders are locals. The rent pays enough to cover our costs of holding it.

    The county council holds monthly “markets” – tat stalls. The stall holders are outsiders, some from hundreds of miles away. So, the trading profit leaves town, and the stall rent leaves town.

    Very little of the money of tourism goes to the tourist destination in the UK state finance and governance system. The people in the position to do local spending don’t get any of the benefits of the local spending, it’s entirely supported by taxing the people who live there not the people who spend there. I’ve had shouting arguements insisting that our toilets should be paid for by the people who use them (tourists), not by the people who don’t use them (tax payers).

    Other countries do this better, where if Costa Del Fag-End Town Council spends money on bringing in more tourists, Costa Del Fag-End Town Council receives more local taxation from the increased business, which pays for the spending bringing in more tourists.

  9. Other countries do this better
    You’re quite right, jgh. Here, this 50,000 resident municipality I live in is essentially a business.

  10. When we were a 80,000 resident municipality – the borough council before it was abolished two years ago – the local taxes went to Scarborough, and were spent in Scarborough. There’s still a long-running legal case of the Whitby Harbour fees, ring-fenced in a 1906 Act to be spent on Whitby Harbour being dumped in the general Scarborough pot.
    Before 1974 we were a 15,000 resident municipality – the old urban district – and the local taxes went to the urban district council. The UDC was replaced with the current parish council, with parish council powers, and parish council funding.

  11. Bloke in North Dorset

    jgh‘s 1:51 pm post explains everything that is wrong with this country: centralisation.

    Everything goes to Westminster and councils and other organisations have to “bid” to get their money back, with the purse strings ultimately controlled by politicians who make the funding decisions.

  12. Yeah BiND. And every time someone suggests hypothecated taxation, politicians & the Civil Service have a fit of the vapours.

  13. BiND,

    Simon Cooke illuminated how councils used to get most of the rates, which meant they had a big incentive to build. You have more housing, you get more money. You lose that incentive, they’re going to become NIMBYs like some of the residents.

    I also object to how English Heritage interfere in what heritage local people want. Whether you knock down or change buildings should be a local matter.

  14. @ jgh
    Not all tourists use the bus or car parks. Last time we were in Whitby my wife and I walked there along the Cleveland Way … we did eat some very good Fish and Chips while we were there

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