A BUS operator has agreed to allow people to buy discount tickets for regular travel across the Devon-Cornwall border.

The decision comes following complaints from families in the Tamar Valley with children attending school in Tavistock that the fares had risen sharply in the new year, in some cases tripling in price from £2 to £6 return.

Now, Go Cornwall Bus says it will allow its Cornwall Zone weekly and monthly tickets to be used to go over the Tamar, bringing the cost for these students down to £3.25 a day.

It’s good news, says grandparent Nick Schemanoff, but he’s still concerned about the rising cost of public transport in an area where air pollution is high.

A spokesperson for the company said: “We have opened up the whole route (Callington to Tavistock) to accept the Cornwall Zone products, even though the route is cross border.

“This has reduced the cost of the weekly tickets by 20 per cent and added a new child monthly product at £65, or £3.25 a day.”

Nick Schemanoff lives in St Ann’s Chapel and his grandchildren also live in the village and attend school in Tavistock.

He said: “After much to-ing and fro-ing with Citybus, this is a bit of a compromise. It’s good on the one hand, but it’s still more than the £1.80 a day they were paying before Christmas.

“For a family of four it’s still more expensive on the bus than in the car. The prices are being put up so much that it’s forcing people to use cars, and we are in an area where air quality is problematic.

“Myself and our Cornwall Councillor Dorothy Kirk are hoping that our MP will ask a question in parliament about it.”

Nick went on to say that he believes around ten percent of Cornwall’s population lives in border parishes, and therefore could be affected by cross-border disadvantages on bus fares.

“We’ve won the battle slightly with our area, but this is a wider problem.”

Nick says that Go Cornwall Bus and City Bus are part of the Go Ahead transport company, which is part owned by Spanish multi national Globalvia.

Globalvia is in turn owned by three pension funds, including the UK’s USS, which says it follows an investment strategy in line with reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. Nick believes this flies in the face of the rising costs to travel by bus.

Meanwhile, back in the Tamar Valley, Go Cornwall Bus says the cost of an individual ticket on routes that cross the Tamar is in line with fares for journeys taken within Cornwall, and in line with the government cap of £3. In response to claims from some local people that they were being charged £3 for a single journey of just a couple of stops, Go Cornwall Bus said: “Bus operators have to comply to the Department for Transport rules of the £3 cap grant, meaning they cannot use it as a flat fare system. We have lower fares for shorter trips.”