£2 Price Cap on fares in England - Now extended beyond October 2023

[overthewater]

Have any of the bus companies down south started promoting their weekly or monthly tickets to these new passengers? Far too often people just don't release there are great value tickets around.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Looks like good new for the fare cap. We now have it continuing over the summer, and then at a slightly higher rate of £2.50 until the end of October 2024. BBC Report

The £2 cap on bus fares in England has been extended again until the end of October, the government has announced.

The cap, which applies to more than 130 bus operators outside of London, will then rise in November to £2.50 for 12 months, before prices are reviewed.

Also related and potentially noteworthy, from same BBC report:

Extending the current cap until the end of October and then subsiding fares at £2.50 until November 2024 will cost £200m, the government said.

As well as releasing cash to keep the cap in place, the Department for Transport said it would provide £300m to councils and operators until 2025 to protect routes that passengers rely on for work, education and medical appointments, and to improve infrastructure.

I'm not sure how far that £300M to protect routes will go though, or which routes it will cover.

 

[mikeg]

Looks like it's due to be extended til October, with a further £2.50 cap for another 13 months.

The Grauniad says:

Bus passengers in England will be able to keep travelling for £2 after the government extended funding by another £500m, easing fears about a further decline in local services.

The fare cap on most local buses, brought in as a temporary measure last year to boost patronage, will be extended until the end of October and then for another 13 months at £2.50 for a single journey, in a move that the Department for Transport said would support people with the cost of living and ensure stability in the sector.

I have to say this is a result. It's proven far cheaper than supporting buses through tendering, even if councils were given grants to do this. Whilst it won't save every service that may be lost, it may enhance others, this certainly seems to the case with buses around Selby. Rural routes in particular those which people may actually want to use, will benefit in particular. For once this government has done something sensible and pro-public transport.

Edit: Damn, beaten to it.

 

[Russel]

Excellent news!

How is the cap meant to work for children?

Are kids fares capped at £2?

Arriva operate my local route and nearly every time I take my son on the bus, I'm charged a different fare for him, it's ranged anywhere between £1.50 and £2 for the same journey, it seems very inconsistent. We've started playing 'guess the fare' while we're waiting at the stop.

 

[Snow1964]

£2 until 31st October, then £2.50 until 30th November 2024

Doesn't apply to all bus routes, there is list by region here

£2 bus fare cap

A list of bus companies and bus routes included in the £2 bus fare cap scheme.

www.gov.uk

• £2 bus fare extended until 31 October to help passengers with cost of living and then £2.50 until November 2024
• new £300 million government investment will protect bus services into 2025 and keep travel affordable
• funding boost will support the bus sector’s long-term recovery, taking total investment for buses to more than £3.5 billion since March 2020

Government extends £2 bus fare cap and protects vital services

Additional funding will help passengers save money on fares and support vulnerable bus routes.

www.gov.uk

wonder if that means general election about October 2024

 

[WatcherZero]

Nationally kids are capped at £2 same as adults but if the journey would be cheaper anyway you should be charged less. Some places have brought in cheaper child caps for example children are capped at £1 in Greater Manchester and West Midlands, while some places have done free travel for kids/under 22's.

 

[Falcon1200]

Excellent news, and from a Government often alleged to hate public transport! I wonder when our caring, sharing SNP/Green administration here in Scotland will follow suit.....

 

[yorksrob]

It is good news, but only partially good news while the Government continues to run down railway passenger services.

 

[Goldfish62]

wonder if that means general election about October 2024

Autumn 2024 is what's generally expected anyway.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 May 2023 ==

Excellent news, and from a Government often alleged to hate public transport!

The fact that buses were a recurring issue in the local elections may have had some bearing on the decision.

But I agree, it is indeed very good news.

 

[Starmill]

Doesn't apply to all bus routes, there is list by region here

Nearly all routes are now in scope of one of the four £2 capped single schemes thankfully. The ones that aren't are mostly school or sightseeing routes, though some are tendered or cross-border.

 

[Dai Corner]

Excellent news, and from a Government often alleged to hate public transport! I wonder when our caring, sharing SNP/Green administration here in Scotland will follow suit.....

Or indeed our Labour-with-a-little-help-from-Plaid-Cymru Government here in Wales.

 

[390136]

I work in Birmingham on Sundays. I start at 10am and the first train from Stoke (changing at Lichfield Trent Valley) gets me in for 10:14.

Thanks to the £2 fare cap, I can get a bus to Stafford to pick up the first up CrossCountry service (which annoyingly goes via Madeley on a Sunday).

 

[Solent&Wessex]

Some irony that just in time for the summer season the local Conservative council is cutting back two of it's rural tendered services near me from next week. One of which is always very busy in the summer season and provides a key transport link to locals and visitors alike, and has been notably busier since the £2 fare cap. They will both drop from hourly to 2-hourly Monday to Saturday and the one which did will no longer serve the Railway Station bus stop which was also well used to provide an easy journey for visitors in to the rural area served.

Madness.

They are constantly moaning about cars on the roads and traffic congestion on the rural roads, yet they now make it harder to use public transport, just as we enter the prime tourist season and the price cap is extended making bus use more attractive.

 

[Goldfish62]

They are constantly moaning about cars on the roads and traffic congestion on the rural roads, yet they now make it harder to use public transport, just as we enter the prime tourist season and the price cap is extended making bus use more attractive.

It's the same woolly logic that bans BSIP funding (Bus Service Improvement Plan) from being used to support existing services, while at the same time wasting money on doomed-to-failure DRT (Demand Responsive Transport) schemes is deemed a good thing.

 

[Mikey C]

Good news. I haven't quite got my head around how this is funded, specifically how the money gets to individual operators, but the scheme seems to be working.

 

[Deerfold]

Good news. I haven't quite got my head around how this is funded, specifically how the money gets to individual operators, but the scheme seems to be working.

Bus companies submitted details about ridership and fares to the DfT who made each company an offer to cap fares at £2 (for Jan-Mar, then to June, then to October).

The bus company decided if that was enough and if it was, their fares are capped. The payment to operators is not dependant on ridership during the scheme.

 

[Starmill]

Good news. I haven't quite got my head around how this is funded, specifically how the money gets to individual operators, but the scheme seems to be working.

I understand it's calculated in relation to the difference between the 2022 fares and the £2 cap. The Department pays a proportion of that difference on every qualifying single fare sold, the other proportion of the cap is borne by the bus operator in recognition of the elasticity i.e. they'll have more people buying tickets. The Department doesn't reimburse anything if there's no difference, or a negative difference, they also don't reimburse anything for inflation since 2022 so the operator funds that part themselves.

This formula makes for a very uneven subsidy distribution though, because for example the two Greenline routes (724 Harlow - Heathrow Airport and 702 Reading - London Victoria) and and the Coastliners (840 Leeds - Whitby and 843 Leeds - Scarborough) could easily rack up an average subsidy of £4 - 6 per passenger per journey, while the likes of Warrington and Nottingham City Transport are probably able to claim no more than 30 - 50p.

 

[Dai Corner]

The payment to operators is not dependant on ridership during the scheme.

The Department pays a proportion of that difference on every qualifying single fare sold,

These statements can't both be true?

 

[Kite159]

Good news with the bus fare cap continuing, a summer of exploring parts of the country I've not been to awaits

Shame such a thing doesn't exist in Wales or Scotland.

 

[Llandudno]

Good news with the bus fare cap continuing, a summer of exploring parts of the country I've not been to awaits

Shame such a thing doesn't exist in Wales or Scotland.

The £6 1BWS day rover ticket valid on virtually every bus in north and mid Wales is pretty reasonable though!

 

[GusB]

Let's just keep the discussion to the £2 scheme in England; whatever happens in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland is off-topic. Thanks

 

[Deerfold]

These statements can't both be true?

I'm basing my description on posts in this thread from November and December last year. Happy to be corrected if they're wrong.

 

[STINT47]

This is good news except its taken operators by surprise.

The bus company I work for currently participates and wants to continue but the department for transport has frustratingly not published any terms and conditions and more importantly the rate of reimbursement reimbursement if we continue.

Until we get the information our customers will not know if we'll can continue the fares cap past the end of June.

 

[Wolfie]

This is good news except its taken operators by surprise.

The bus company I work for currently participates and wants to continue but the department for transport has frustratingly not published any terms and conditions and more importantly the rate of reimbursement reimbursement if we continue.

Until we get the information our customers will not know if we'll can continue the fares cap past the end of June.

You are, judging by what's come out about the extension of free nursery places without adequate funding being put in place, absolutely right to be sceptical.

 

[Soundwave]

This is good news except its taken operators by surprise.

The bus company I work for currently participates and wants to continue but the department for transport has frustratingly not published any terms and conditions and more importantly the rate of reimbursement reimbursement if we continue.

Until we get the information our customers will not know if we'll can continue the fares cap past the end of June.

From what I was told on Monday by those with direct connections within CPT, operators were NOT expecting the £2.00 fare to continue beyond June. So things have moved very fast. The tweet from Trent Barton earlier today about the extension is certainly reflecting the feelings elsewhere.

 

[Trainlog]

Have any of the bus companies down south started promoting their weekly or monthly tickets to these new passengers? Far too often people just don't release there are great value tickets around.

Stagecoach East Kent has made a bit of an effort with adverts on the back of some of the buses promoting the cap.

Arriva Kent has only put advertisements about the cap on the bus interiors, but nothing at the buses exterior ad spaces or at bus stops bringing up the cap unfortunately.

 

[158756]

You are, judging by what's come out about the extension of free nursery places without adequate funding being put in place, absolutely right to be sceptical.

Before too long this will end up like the arguments about ENTCS, but worse. I don't know the details of how the funding works, but from reading on here is the financial viability of bus routes under this scheme entirely divorced from current usage? Do operators gain anything from trying to attract new customers? And the longer this goes on the bigger the problems will be when the funding ends and fares go up to what they were before plus multiple years of high inflation.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 May 2023 ==

Stagecoach East Kent has made a bit of an effort with adverts on the back of some of the buses promoting the cap.

Arriva Kent has only put advertisements about the cap on the bus interiors, but nothing at the buses exterior ad spaces or at bus stops bringing up the cap unfortunately.

If everyone knew from the start that the cap would last to October and then £2.50 for another year - and given the likely timing of the next general election there's a decent chance something will happen beyond that as well - then more effort would probably have been made to advertise it. Similarly, would operators who didn't sign up for the three months initially want to join now? Can they?

 

[Wolfie]

Stagecoach East Kent has made a bit of an effort with adverts on the back of some of the buses promoting the cap.

Arriva Kent has only put advertisements about the cap on the bus interiors, but nothing at the buses exterior ad spaces or at bus stops bringing up the cap unfortunately.

Arriva on Shropshire has it on every destination panel.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 May 2023 ==

Before too long this will end up like the arguments about ENTCS, but worse. I don't know the details of how the funding works, but from reading on here is the financial viability of bus routes under this scheme entirely divorced from current usage? Do operators gain anything from trying to attract new customers? And the longer this goes on the bigger the problems will be when the funding ends and fares go up to what they were before plus multiple years of high inflation.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 May 2023 ==



If everyone knew from the start that the cap would last to October and then £2.50 for another year - and given the likely timing of the next general election there's a decent chance something will happen beyond that as well - then more effort would probably have been made to advertise it. Similarly, would operators who didn't sign up for the three months initially want to join now? Can they?

Ensign didn't originally sign up but are now participating. Whether that is because they are now owned by First Essex which was participating who knows?

 

[Starmill]

If everyone knew from the start that the cap would last to October and then £2.50 for another year - and given the likely timing of the next general election there's a decent chance something will happen beyond that as well - then more effort would probably have been made to advertise it. Similarly, would operators who didn't sign up for the three months initially want to join now? Can they?

Yes - new services were eligible for the second round, and most routes which didn't participate in a fare cap scheme by the time of the start of the second round were able to be included.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 May 2023 ==

I'm basing my description on posts in this thread from November and December last year. Happy to be corrected if they're wrong.

I think that was true in anticipation of the first round, but the second round includes routes that didn't exist in 2022.

 

[Kite159]

It will be interesting if any of the bus operators who were part of the original scheme drop out of the extension for various reasons. Or even some of the bus companies which didn't originally sign up to the scheme signing up.