The George Municipality has announced a hike in the fares for the Go George bus service.
In a statement Monday, the George Municipality said the fare increase will implemented on 1 February 2017.
“This is the first increase since the roll-out of the bus service in December 2014.”
“Actually, we are supposed to implement annual increases, like other municipal service tariffs,” said James Robb, GO GEORGE Manager.
“However, we were holding back two scheduled increases, hoping to first allow the entire community to start out the bus service at the same price. With the repeated postponement of the Phase 4 roll-out, it has now unfortunately become impossible to keep postponing the tariff increase too,” he said.
“Our budget has now already had to absorb the impact of the loss of income of two postponed increases.”
“Single bus tickets bought off bus at vendors, will cost R9.00, which is only 50c more than the current price of R8.50. Passengers are encouraged to buy their tickets before boarding a bus, to save boarding time and enable the system to stay on schedule,” the George Municipality statement said.
“To reinforce this practice, a R1.00 additional increase was approved for tickets bought on the bus, those tickets then costing R10.00.”
“To give passengers time to use their old tickets, and especially multi-journey tickets, a grace period of one calendar month will be allowed for the use of the current tickets. No old tickets will be accepted after 28 February 2017,” the statement said.
