YORK'S biggest bus operator is freezing its single adult ticket prices for the second year running - but is raising the cost of daily, weekly, monthly and annual season tickets.

First York is also launching a new ticket, available only through a mobile app, giving adult passengers ten trips for £18 or £1.80 per journey.

The company says the ticket, valid for six months, will save customers up to £1.20 on each trip if using the bus for more expensive journeys - for example into the city centre from an outlying village.

"Customers simply download the App, register, select from a variety of tickets and navigate the secure payment system. Once the payment section is complete, bus tickets live in a virtual wallet ready for the customer to show the driver," said a spokesman.

He said ticket prices for young people were being frozen as part of the ticket price review whilst the Child Month ticket price had been cut by £2.50 to £20, and the Child Day, at £2, and the Child Week, at £5, had been frozen.

He said the FirstDay price was increasing by 20p to £4, the FirstWeek by 50p to £13, the FirstMonth by £1 to £47 and the FirstAnnual by £10 to £470.

"The weekly, monthly and annual tickets still remain cheaper than three years ago," he said. "For example, the FirstWeek price in August 2013 was £16, still almost 20 per cent cheaper compared to the new price on 17 July this year."

He added that increases to day, week and month tickets could be avoided by switching to mobile ticketing.

Managing director Marc Bichtemann said the price increases on multi journey tickets took account of the increasing cost of operating buses.

"However, these limited increases have been kept to a minimum and still largely remain cheaper than in 2013. Customers using multi-journey tickets still gain excellent value for money with the cost of travel at less than £1.50 per day based on an annual ticket."

He said it had still proved possible to freeze single tickets because of increased revenue from rising passenger numbers.

He added that over the last two years, First had invested more than £1million in improving services including new buses and staff training as well as mobile ticketing and network wide Wi-Fi.

"These improvements have been recognised with passenger growth showing nearly 3 per cent more customers using First York compared to last year and follows the Transport Focus bus survey results earlier in the year that show First York services achieving 91 per cent satisfaction."

The new fares come in on Sunday.