Park and ride multi-day tickets expiry dates explained
3 April 2023
In February, Cornwall Council changed the system for buying tickets on the park and ride. Individual day tickets now have to purchased from the driver on boarding the bus; multi-day tickets now have to be purchased through the First Bus app and the park and ride cards can no longer be topped up with credits.
When making this change, Cornwall Council said on the park and ride web page, "The 5, 20 and 60 day Multi-Day products can be purchased via the First Bus App and will still offer the same great value for regular users of the service.” However, it turns out that this is not the case. It is not the “same great value”. With the Cornwall Council card, there was no expiry date. This meant that an infrequent user of the park and ride could purchase a card with credits of 5, 20 or 60 days and use it whenever they liked. This appealed to many passengers who might go into Truro on the park and ride once or twice a month and they found it convenient, and cheaper, to have a card rather than pay each time that they travelled.
With the First Bus app, there are short expiry dates on the use of the multi-day tickets. I found that the 5-day ticket that I purchased expired in 30 days before I had used any of them. I am still trying to get recompense from First or Cornwall Council for what I allege was a misselling of the product. I have now ascertained that the expiry dates on the 20-day and 60-day tickets also mean that purchasers of these products could find that some of the credits have expired before they have all been used. The expiry dates are:
• 5-day ticket 30 days
• 20-day ticket 90 days
• 60-day ticket 180 days
See screenshots of app purchase options below.
The only passengers who will benefit from purchasing 5 or 20-day tickets will be those who use the park and ride at least 2 days a week. Those who purchase a 60-day ticket would need to use it more than twice a week or they would find that it had expired before they had used all the credits (2 days a week for 26 weeks equals 52 days of travel, i.e. would lose the last 8 credits). There is no longer any advantage in a casual user of the park and ride purchasing these products.
It is interesting to note that the 5-day ticket for all Cornwall (£20 for any 5 days) has an expiry date of 6 months on the First app or 1 year on the Go Cornwall app. I must assume, therefore, that the short expiry dates for the park and ride tickets have been introduced as a deliberate act by Cornwall Council in order to dissuade casual users from buying these tickets, thus forcing them to pay the full daily ticket price. The park and ride timetable used to say (as recently as February 2023), "Even if you only use the service once a month, you will still save money with a 5, 20 or 60 day multi-journey ticket.” Recently, this has been amended to say, "These tickets are available via the First Bus App and will continue to save money for regular travellers.” It is very disappointing to see that this is what the Council has done. It may deter those who used to use the park and ride from doing so in future and will add to boarding times on buses as far fewer passengers will have multi-day tickets and more will have to pay the driver on boarding.
Update
19 April 2023
Cornwall Council has now announced that the expiry dates on the multi-day tickets are being extended.
See Council extends expiry dates.