A
subdivision of
stagecoach, a
bus company which has had some rather
controversial allegations placed against it, including but not limited to supporting
section 28 and attempting to form a
monopoly
Magic Bus itself is a cheap bus service designed for students. Strange, how Magic Bus is the cheapest bus service in Manchester, yet the Stagecoach buses are the most expensive. This doesn't make any sense, you may think, but it is all part of their evil evil little plan.
Magic buses, seem to contain no element of magic at all. But then you look closer and you realise that they are the very epitome of lower black magic. They sell a week bus ticket for the stagecoach company that is cheaper than the ones you would buy on the main stagecoach buses. This gives you an impression of getting a good deal, and of getting "one over The Man" so to speak. Unfortunately this scheme wouldn't work in most cases. In order to actually make a profit from it, you would have to take more than 10 bus journeys at maximum fare, in 7 days. For some people, this is their normal bus usage, for others, they normally fall short. For the latter group of people stagecoach have a secondary spell to weave. Convenience.
The most common bus in Manchester, is a stagecoach bus. They probably have the same number of buses as all the other companies combined. So when you buy a "Megarider" bus pass, you know that you don't need to carry spare change around, and you don't need to wait long for the bus of your choice to appear.
In a nutshell, Magic Bus is a tool to work the evils of a Stagecoach monopoly. There are numerous bus companies in Manchester: Oxford Road has one of, if not THE busiest bus routes in Europe. Most of the competing companies are quite big, but are still tiny compared to the beast that is Stagecoach. Stagecoach therefore have managed to mingle cheap fares with expensive fares and added a sprinkle of convenience, in order to set the customer up to only use their buses.
This kind of tactic has been used successfully by another company, and as such, Stagecoach have had their fair share of spankings for attempting to set up a monopoly, although they still get away with it in the end.