The Council has issued a statement saying that 12,000 “All York” teenagers’ bus tickets were sold during August.

For 12 months the Council and bus companies resisted providing any information on sales figures.

When eventually they were forced to publish them, it was revealed that sales of the taxpayer subsidised “All York” tickets were only 25% of forecast levels.

The young persons travel tickets were designed to provide cheaper fares for teenagers during the schools holidays.

The £1-30 a day tickets were a worthy project in principle which bus companies should have been happy to fund. The extra revenue, won by filling empty seats, would have more than covered their costs

However, the York Council chose to offer a 20p per journey taxpayers subsidy.

So that’s around £2,400 taxpayers have had to fork out in just 1 month for a scheme that has netted bus companies around £15,000.

One bus operator is claiming that the August sales represent a 500% increase over the previous year. Given that there wasn’t an ”All York” teenagers ticket available last year then that seems to be a spurious claim.

If the announcement heralds a more open approach by the Council to the provision of information about local bus services then that is to be welcomed.

We look forward to seeing details of service reliability published on a regular basis.