Bus passengers across Huddersfield and Calderdale are happier with the service they are getting.
A new study by the watchdog group Passenger Focus shows more people rating local services.
But there are concerns about the fares structure and problems with tickets.
Out of 1,744 people surveyed, 88% were either very satisfied or fairly satisfied with the services. Just 3% were critical.
But 32% were critical of the value for money offered by local bus services.
Metro Chairman Clr James Lewis said: “I am pleased to see that overall satisfaction with West Yorkshire bus services has risen along with the scores relating to punctuality and driver helpfulness and that people’s concerns about anti-social behaviour have dropped to below the average across comparable areas.
“The bus operators’ efforts to achieve these improvements should be recognised but there is clearly more to do on value for money, which despite a 1% improvement on last year, still lags significantly behind the other similar areas.
“I am concerned that our research shows that people have difficulties finding out about the best value fare for their journey. This difficulty is reflected by 1 in 7 West Yorkshire bus users having the experience of being refused travel due to their ticket being valid with only one operator. People who do not regularly uses buses will face even greater difficulties”.
Dave Alexander, regional Managing Director of First, said the survey followed a number of improvements introduced by the company, in 2013 including more journeys on time, lower bus fares and investment in new buses.
“Today’s Passenger Focus results show that our growth strategy is working,” he said. “The positive Passenger Focus results come as no surprise. We’ve made some far reaching improvements in West Yorkshire that are reaping rewards. Fares reductions have helped encourage an extra 100,000 people per week to travel with First. Of course we’ve still got more to do and the results of this survey will help us to identify further improvements and attract even more people to First buses.”
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