Wintec journalism student Many Hamilton tertiary students are paying more to get to class than their counterparts in Wellington and Auckland.
Hamilton students pay a $6.60 cash fare each day to travel to and from class.
The city's public transport company Busit has no concession fares for tertiary students, charging them the adult flat rate of $3.30 one-way.
Auckland's Maxx and Wellington's Metlink bus services also have no rate for tertiary students but charge on a sliding scale depending on distance travelled.
Maxx services charges as little as 50 one-way and Metlink $1.60 within inner city locations.
Thousands of tertiary students in Hamilton are looking for the cheapest way to get to their classes.
The university and Wintec campuses have limited student parking, forcing many students to use buses.
But the cash prices and lack of a student fare has left some travellers unhappy, with many either walking, or finding it cheaper to drive and pay for parking.
Waikato Regional Council policy and transport group manager Vaughan Payne says discounted fares are available to everybody who has a BUSIT card.
Busit card car holders pay $2.40. Tertiary students can save 90 on a single cash fare - that's a saving of more than 27 per cent.
Mr Payne says talks have been held with Hamilton's tertiary institutions about the possibility of subsidising a student fare. Without that subsidy, introducing a discounted fare for tertiary students - who are adults - would require more funding from ratepayers and taxpayers.
University student Nicole Torburn says she lives right by a bus stop, but it's too expensive. "I usually end up walking over 30 minutes to class. Most places have concession prices for uni students; if it was cheaper with my student ID, I would take the bus."
This year Busit attended O-week at Wintec city campus to talk about its facilities and give students chances to win prizes, but focused little on the pricing issue.
"I was confused; they were at O-week telling us to use the bus because it was cheaper, but when I did I was told I had to pay an adult fare because student pricing was only for high school students," Wintec student Andrew Forsythe said.
Maxx and Metlink offer a flat monthly rate for unlimited bus usage. The flat rate works out to be $4.51 per day for as many trips as the purchaser needs for Maxx riders and $4.67 per day for riders on Metlink.
In Hamilton, there is no monthly flat rate, but Busit does offer a card that discounts the adult rate to $2.40 one-way.
The Busit card would make the trip $4.80 for tertiary students a day, still more than in Wellington and Auckland.
Mr Payne says the cost of running bus services is only partly covered by fares - for every $1 paid by a passenger, there's at least $2 of subsidy. So, the majority of the cost of operating a public bus service is actually covered by ratepayers and taxpayers.
"Government has made it clear we have to reduce the amount of taxpayer subsidy, and ratepayers have also told us that we need to keep rates affordable."
Mr Payne says concessions will be reviewed when work gets under way on the next draft public transport plan. There will be an opportunity for people to have their say on the region's services, including fares, when that draft plan is released for public comment, with the feedback to inform the council's final decisions.