AFC Bournemouth fans: How convenient is your match day travel?

The Football League and Liftshare signed a nationwide deal to bring cheaper match day travel to fans of all 72 clubs, and throughout season 15/16 we’ll be working with supporter groups and fan sites to help get their communities car sharing to games and saving big cash on football travel.

As part of the deal, we launched an official Football league travel site called Get to the Game, which lets fans of all clubs enter their team and a fixture, then quickly see all the transport options available to them – including car sharing.

Why car share to a match? Well, if you drive to games, you can make back your petrol money by splitting it with other football fans. Simply visit our ‘Offer a Lift’ tool, post your match journey online and offer your spare seats to other fans travelling to the same game. You can see how much you’ll make quickly on this page.

Or if you don’t have a car, you can request a lift from our friendly community of over 450,000 members. It’s far cheaper than train and other modes of public transport.

As part of our Football League efforts, we’re speaking with fan sites up and down the country to get a handle on how they travel to games, and to get their opinion on how match travel could be better. Today we hear from Steve at AFC Bournmeouth fan site The South End, which is a one-stop site for all your club news and a great place to meet other dedicated fans.

Here’s what Steve had to tell us about what it takes to travel to every AFC Bournemouth match:

Liftshare: How does the city get whenever Bournemouth are playing at home? – Is it a nightmare to travel across say, the Boscombe area? Does public transport get crazy, is it hard to get parked?
Steve: I’ve never travel on public transport to the match, as I always go by car. There is the car park but this is a pain to get out of after the match. Parking around the ground is street parking, so you need to get to the ground early to get a space. I now get a lift and get dropped off.
Liftshare: How expensive is it to follow the club to every away match when there’s no fan coaches available?
Steve: This obviously depends very much on which ground I’m going to. If it’s Southampton or a London club usually go by train, which isn’t cheap. But booking early reduces the price. Further away its either the coach or car. Car is usually the cheapest, as the cost is shared between four or five people. We went to Aston Villa last season and hired a minibus. This only cost around £20 each, so this is a great option.
Liftshare: What’s your view on paying for trains to away games? 
Steve: The trains are expensive, unless you get some kind of special ticket. Weekends are alwasy busy and its not aways easy to get a seat. However, even though the train is expensive (and no I dont like paying thier prices) it’s still my preferred method of travel when I can afford it.
Liftshare: What do you think of Liftshare’s deal with Football League to help clubs like Bournemouth give cheaper travel to fans, and lower transport chaos around the home ground during games?
Steve: The principle of Liftshare is a great idea especially for away games. Most fans will organise their own transport, but if someone needs a lift its the perfect solution.

Thanks to Steve for his great input, and if you’re a football fan who would like to share your views with us about travelling to your club’s games, we’d live to hear from you at superheroes@liftshare.com