This post is dedicated to my friend Babs who is responsible for this way I've been saving money lately.
I live without a car. Once in a while I'll rent one, but I use the bus generally to get around. Where I live there's a bus to the nearest city, and if the intercity bus doesn't reach where I want to go, then within the city I can either take another bus (or many) or take the light rail or a combination.
Our buses to the city cost 85 cents. Within the city buses cost $1.70. It used to be you could get a transfer if you pay cash, but then they changed it and you could only get a transfer within 1.5 hours if you used a smart card to pay for your fare. You could fill up your smart card on the buses. With the smart card, for every dollar you put on you get an extra 25 cents added to the amount of money on your card. With a child's smart card, for every dollar you put in, you get 2 dollars. Then when you used the card the fee would come off the card's total, but because you got more than you put in, you still got a discount, half off for the kids and 20 percent off for you. You also get an automatic transfer when using these cards within an hour and a half.
In addition to this, you can also get a daily pass on your card. Either a daily pass for within the city (and intercity to places with cheap bus service like where I live) or more expensive ones for larger locations, such as between different cities and within them, with different fares depending on where you were going, which was generally significantly cheaper than paying for fares each way. The daily pass within the city was only worth it if you took the bus at least 3 separate times (not within 1.5 hours of each other). The intercity pass was always worth it.
Then things got more complicated.