STAGECOACH South West announced today (Monday) extensions to their Exeter ticket zones.

The changes will take effect from Monday, October 27 and will result in significant reductions in daily and season ticket travel costs for, amongst others, residents of Cranbrook and Cullompton.

The Exeter Megarider zone is being extended to include the new town of Cranbrook, with the cost of a daily ticket falling from £5.50 to £3.60 and the cost of a weekly ticket reducing from £20 to £14, savings of 35% and 30% respectively.

The Exeter Megarider Plus zone is being extended to include Cullompton as well as Ottery St Mary, Bradninch and Bickleigh. Day ticket prices will reduce from £7.50 to £5.50 and weekly ticket prices from £26.00 to £20.00, savings of 27% and 23% respectively.

Customers in these areas will also see reductions in the price of their 4, 13 and 52 week tickets.

Stagecoach South West’s Managing Director, Michael Watson, said: “Exeter is a real success story with the city growing at an exponential rate and more and more towns forming part of the catchment area. To reflect this, earlier this year we successfully extended our ‘Plus’ zone to include Dawlish and Crediton.

"However I felt there was still more we could do to help our customers and, by including these additional locations, anyone travelling in and out of the city on a regular basis will be able to access even more affordable travel.”

Stagecoach has been independently recognised as offering the best value bus fares in Britain three consecutive times with weekly travel on average 12% lower than the next cheapest bus operator1.

The operator also invests millions of pounds a year in new vehicles to deliver a higher standard of service for customers.

Earlier this year, the Group announced it had placed orders for £100million worth of new buses and coaches for its UK operations.