Are bus prices too much?

In an era of increasing prices we all look to reducing costs where we can. As part of the Oxford conurbation, I feel proud of the bus service. Largely we can catch buses to and across the City with reasonable efficiency. The cost for me to get to town is £1.80. Is this too much? Well certainly if you compare it with the cost of travelling on the London Underground you probably feel it is reasonable. However if you compare it with cost of travelling, say in Berlin then it is bad. In Berlin, as with many places on continental Europe you buy a ticket that lasts you for say 3 hours and that ticket can be used on almost any service, whether it is train or bus. That to me is an integrated system. Oh, and the price? Probably about half of what it costs in me to make a single journey into Oxford. So yes, in my opinion the bus service is expensive. However what I would like to see is a restructuring of how we pay for buses. This system of buying a ticket for one journey on one bus service cripples the value of the service to the community. It stupidly increases journey times, increases frustration, and dramatically reduces the number of people using the service. So when my inbox gets another email from the campaign for better transport complaining about the cost of fares, I would argue they are campaigning for the wrong thing. Let me be clear, I need my bus services to run at a healthy profit. The only way that I want ticket prices to come down is through concepts of competition. That model has worked well in Oxford. The Oxford bus service is second to none from my experience. The ticketing system is on the other hand something out of the dark ages.