My bus fare from Odd Down to the town centre in Bath (a 2.2 mile journey) has just risen again, to £2.10 a single. Let’s say (I don’t know for sure – I rarely get returns) that this means a 2-way journey is, what, £4.00?

Now let’s think about me, my wife and 2 boys, wanting to go down into town on a Saturday. The boys are currently (but not for much longer) free. So for just my wife and I to go down and back into town is £8.00, or thereabouts.

Car parking in Bath isn’t cheap, but I know that I can park ours for an entire day at a central location (I’m not telling you where it is in case you find it) for £4.00.

The sum  is already looking pretty weak in support of Bath’s buses, but let’s add in some other bits of the equation: on the plus side, travelling by bus is greener. On the minus, the journey time is the same in bus or car and comfort (getting 2 kids + pushchair etc onto crowded bus) is much better in a car. There are a whole load of other things on the periphery too: endlessly rude and suicidally fast bus drivers and bonkers passengers among them, but I won’t bang on here.

Now, we’re reasonably green, and like to think about the environment as much as possible, but the equation is looking pretty badly balanced to me. Not only do we have to suffer a worse journey but we’re also asked to pay double what we’d pay in the car. Double. And that is only going to get more expensive as the kids get older.

I know that X councillor at  BN&S or Y worker at First is likely to point out that buses are an expensive bit of infrastructure and that pointing at London or Manchester or any other big city who seem to manage to do this stuff right is somehow irrelevant because of the scale involved. But to them I just say – if you have to, run the buses at a loss – because that is the only way that you’ll get people to really embrace their use. Or maybe less radically, try some other pricing models – for instance loyalty cards or “every 100th person wins an ipod” – anything – just not this horrific, creeping, ever-increasing ticket price for a transport mode which represents absolutely nothing to normal people apart from some far-away notion of “being a bit more green”.

For buses to work, the price point either needs to be the same or more attractive than the alternative. We’re a middle class not badly off family who cares about green issues and we quite often choose the car. What possible hope is there of attracting a single mum with 3 kids and a minimal income at these prices?