SIGNIFICANT changes must be made to ticketing systems on York's controversial ftr service, the city's council leader said today.

Steve Galloway, City of York Council leader, said he has made it clear to operator First that "there needed to be a substantial improvement in the availability and choice of payment methods for travel".

Speaking to leading councillors at a meeting of the authority's ruling executive, Coun Galloway said he had met directors of First to discuss problems with the ftr ticketing.

Since the service was launched on the University of York to Acomb route in May, The Press has been deluged with letters, emails and phone calls from unhappy commuters.

Coun Galloway said: "Adverse comments have focused on the ticket machine, which is criticised as not being intuitive, is unreliable, and inflexible. The scanning device often appears to fail to validate bar-coded tickets.

"I met with directors of First on September 20.

"At the meeting, I made it clear that there needed to be a substantial improvement in the availability and a choice of payments for travel.

"I indicated that I did not believe that the existing ticket machine was suitable for purpose and a fresh approach was needed.

"This should include reliable validation arrangements for those tickets, and passes, obtained off-bus - including the mobile phone option - that additional facilities were needed both on and off bus and that the company should aspire to use proven technology."

Coun Galloway said First had indicated to him that a programme was in place which would see "vehicle reliability issues" tackled by the end of November - with plans to modify the on-bus ticket machines.

"I will be meeting with senior managers at First again before the end of the year. I am anticipating that by then they will be able to table some customer satisfaction survey results which demonstrate that the vast majority of users are happy with all the major features of the ftr service."

No one at First was available for comment.