BUS and rail passengers will face above-inflation price rises in the New Year.

Metro, which runs services across West Yorkshire, has confirmed fares are going up by about 5% from January 2.

The rises will affect thousands of Huddersfield people who travel on buses and trains and use Metrocards and DayRover tickets.

A Metro spokesman said: “The new prices apply to tickets bought on or after January 2; anyone buying a ticket between Christmas and the New Year will be charged the existing price.

“Both tickets still represent good value for money, especially for those passengers who regularly use buses and trains or buses run by different operators at different times of the day.

“Metro administers the MetroCard and DayRover schemes on behalf of the bus and train operators, and the prices reflect the extra 3% agreed in 2006 to pay for the six additional trains to provide 1,700 additional seats on peak-time train services into and out of Leeds, as well as the increase in fares announced by major operators Arriva and First, which will also start in January”.

The price of a bus MetroCard will go up from £75 to £80 a month and from £20 to £21 a week.

Combined bus and rail cards for Huddersfield area passengers will rise from £122 to £132 monthly and from £32 to £35.50 weekly.

DayRover tickets go up from £6.60 to £7.20 while concessionary DayRover tickets will rise from £2.85 to £3.10.

Elderly passengers will also have to pay more, following a Metro decision back in June to increase the concessionary fares from January.

West Yorkshire’s transport chief James Lewis has called for more competition to help improve services for passengers.

Clr Lewis, who chairs Metro, said the Competition Commission claim that passengers are suffering from a lack of healthy rivalry between bus companies – with the five largest bus firms carrying 70% of passengers, was accurate.

The report sets out a series of measures to ensure passengers benefited from greater competition.

These included better ticketing and better information and restrictions on changes to services.

He said: “I’m pleased to see that the Competition Commission agrees with what Metro and other local transport authorities have been saying for many years – that there is little or no competition in the local bus market.

“I'm also pleased to see that they recognise that the transport authorities have to consider the wider social needs of passengers and that a franchise-based Quality Contract Scheme – which would create genuine competition for the market rather than none within in – is a viable way forward.”

He added: “We believe that the only way to reverse the decline in bus patronage is to create a value-for-money network which is stable in terms of route changes and fares, enables passengers to catch the first bus they want irrespective of the operator and to use modern technologies such as smartcards and bus tracking to deliver a true 21st-century experience catered around the needs of the passenger, not the shareholder.”