I AM York born and bred, and during my childhood I recall local bus services in York run by West Yorkshire as being frequent, well used and reasonably priced.

When I compare prices of buses in Hull with those in York it is a very different story. I believe in York it is £3 for a day ticket, £12 for a weekly ticket and £40 for a four-weekly (not monthly ticket). In Hull, a much bigger city than York, with East Yorkshire buses it is £2.20 for a day ticket, £6.50 for a weekly ticket and only £24 for a full month ticket.

A return journey from my home into Hull city centre is eight miles and with my monthly ticket it costs about 80p return per day. Understandably at this price the frequent buses are very well used.

On a recent visit to my sister, we went up to Monks Cross by bus. For me, my wife and two children it cost us £10 return and we travelled only a few miles, although we had to use two buses in each direction. I'm sure a taxi would have been no more expensive and would have been much quicker.

Yet it costs us only £11 for my whole family to travel into Hull with an East Yorkshire day ticket (four miles) and then a further 40 miles to York and back again. So an 88-mile return journey costs just £1 more than it costs to go from Clifton to Monks Cross with First York. Although traffic does affect bus operations in York I do get the impression that First York's sole aim is trying to extract as much money out of the public as possible.

M G Robinson,

Ridgeway Road,

Willerby Road,

Hull.

Updated: 10:50 Thursday, March 23, 2006