Bus and Train Tickets with Plusbus
Unlimited Bus Travel with Rail Tickets in London, Manchester & more
Rail passengers can now add unlimited bus travel around towns at either end of their journey, for a small extra charge
Plusbus is available in over 200 towns and cities from Inverness in the north down to Penzance in the south.
Prices vary from place to place, but are in the £1 to £3.50 range. For this, you can make as many journeys as you like in the local area. Each town specifies the bus operators that accept the tickets and has a zone map defining the limits of the scheme. Some places, like Sheffield, Nottingham and Birmingham include local tram services in the ticket. Others, notably Manchester and Blackpool, do not.
You must buy your ticket at the same time as a train ticket. You can do this either at the station or by phone. Plans are in place to provide online booking facilities late in 2007. Advance ticket purchases allow you to use Plusbus to get to your starting station.
Tickets are valid on the day of train travel when buying a single or day return ticket. If you are staying away overnight you can buy two Plusbus tickets, but you need to specify the date of your return journey when booking.
In most places, rail season ticket holders can buy a Plusbus ticket for the duration of their ticket. These are currently available in about 130 towns and cities and are valid in conjunction with weekly, monthly quarterly and annual season tickets.
Plusbus ticket simply have “+BUS” added to the station name on the train ticket. For example, if you travel from Edinburgh to Liverpool and buy Plusbus tickets for both cities the ticket will be printed “EDINBURGH+BUS” and “LIVERPOOL+BUS”. To use the bus simply show this ticket to the driver when boarding.
Reduced fares are available for children and railcard holders. Children aged 5 to 15 travel at half the adult rate, while disabled people, families, senior citizen and young people can save one third, if they buy the ticket using a valid railcard.
The most expensive ticket is £3.50, which gives a day’s unrestricted travel on red buses in London.
Tickets cost £1 for Aberystwyth, Colwyn Bay, Exeter, Great Yarmouth, Harwich, Ipswich, Llandudno, Milton Keynes, Rhyl, Ruabon, and Wrexham and a number of other smaller towns.
Other prices include Birmingham (£1.70), Bournemouth (£3.00), Bradford (£2.50), Bristol (£3.00), Burnley (£1.50), Cambridge (£2.70), Cardiff (£2.80), Cheltenham Spa (£2.50), Chester (£1.50), Coventry (£1.70), Derby (£2.50), Durham (£1.50), Edinburgh (£2.50), Fareham & Gosport (£2.50), Gloucester (£2.50), Leeds (£2.50), Liverpool (£3.00), Luton (£1.80), Manchester (£1.70), Nottingham (£2.70), Plymouth (£2.50), Portsmouth & Southsea (£2.50), Sheffield (£2.20), Sunderland (£1.90) Warrington (£3.00), Wolverhampton (£1.70) and York (£3.00)
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