Published: Friday, 4th December, 2009 2:00pm

Bus ticket machines 'absolutely worn out'

by Adam Hewitt

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TWENTY on-board bus ticket machines in Reading break down every day.

Reading Transport chief executive James Freeman admitted the scale of the problem at a public meeting to discuss proposals to slash bus frequencies on the number 22 from Earley to Caversham Heights via Reading town centre.

When one passenger complained that some drivers fail to issue tickets properly, Mr Freeman said: "We do get reports of that and we go after it, we want to know why.

"But the other factor is that our ticket machines were state-of-the art in 1999. Now they are absolutely worn out. They fail on an incredible basis, on average 20 every day.

"We're replacing these machines but it's a long process. They don't always fail in the same way."

At the meeting at Maiden Erlegh School in Silverdale Road, Earley, on Wednesday last week, Mr Freeman also revealed that the discounted £1 tickets on buses to Coley Park and Lower Caversham have been losing the company money.

He said: "It's the most difficult issue we face, setting the prices. It doesn't necessarily follow that discounting brings people onto the buses. We've increased the number of passengers, yes, but the revenue has gone down."

One commentator on transport in Reading, who writes as 'Riverside' on a local web forum, said there is very little advertising for the £1 routes, so people might not be aware of them. He said: "How are non-customers supposed to know about it? Or is that the point - prove that it fails?"

Mr Freeman also said that the fixed-price diesel his company buys in advance is now working out for the best as prices rise.

He was pilloried in summer 2008 when he brought masses of fuel as prices peaked, causing financial difficulties for the company, but said at the meeting: "In July 2008 the diesel price stopped rising and dropped again, that was a disbenefit - now it's rising it's a benefit."

He confirmed that the bio-ethanol buses are being converted to run on diesel, following the scandal in October when it transpired that the fuel was actually being shipped in from Sweden, not from waste products of sugar manufacture in Norfolk as claimed.