Paper school bus tickets to stop from July

23 May 2014

Old-style paper school bus tickets will no longer be valid for travel after the last day of the current school year on Friday 18 July 2014.

Transport and Technical Services (TTS) and LibertyBus are advising all students and parents of the change, which follows the introduction of the LibertyBus Student Avanchicard.

The Student Avanchicard was introduced by LibertyBus in 2013 as a simple and secure stored-value electronic smartcard. Similar to London's Oyster Card, it has quickly become the favoured method of payment for journeys to and from school by bus.

Exchange full books of paper tickets for card credit

Stocks of paper tickets have been run down since the start of the year, and many schools and shops have already sold out. The old-style tickets will soon be withdrawn from the small number of shops that still have supplies, and anyone who has full books of unused tickets is asked to exchange them for Student Avanchicard credit at Liberation Station before September 2014.

Unlike the paper tickets, the card can also be used on all public transport services on non-schooldays, adding an extra level of flexibility and helping to speed up bus boarding times by eliminating on-board cash handling.

Smartcard ticketing

Craig Miller, Public Transport Planner at TTS, said “Students have been using paper tickets on school bus services for many years.  However, they were always vulnerable to loss, theft, or damage, and it has been planned for some time to replace them with modern electronic smartcard ticketing. All of these problems are solved by the Student Avanchicard that has gradually been replacing the paper tickets, as the stored credit can easily be transferred to a replacement card if required.

“Now that the vast majority of bus journeys to and from school are made using a Student Avanchicard, it is time to take the last few old-style tickets out of circulation. I would like to encourage those who have not yet obtained their Student Avanchicard to do so at Liberation Station over the coming weeks.”