Will Labour scrap the £2 fare Cap? (now confirmed will rise to £3)

[Baxenden Bank]

The previous government cobbled together this whole scheme at the last minute, and have been renewing it at the last minute and dribs and drabs ever since. It seems weird to get outraged that this government wants to do a decent and systematic review of spending, and as a result has made it clear when the announcement will come. Perhaps it would be better to wait until the 30th before you start declaring the end of days and distributing the koolaid.

Grape Flavor Aid not Koolaid!

 

[yorksrob]

You are not. For my money. This government is the worst we've had in a while and given what went before that saying something

I think they'd have to go a long way before they plumb the depths of the last one.

They have got the strikes sorted after years of letting rail services deteriorate. They're bringing in genuine new policies around the energy market for example.

But there is no doubt that they've expended a lot of political capital on frivolities such as gifts/donations and they've built up the negative anticipation of this budget to the point of damaging economic confidence. They're also in danger of looking like the puritans banning Christmas.

They do need to get their act together and speak more about the positive policy changes, rather than emphasising cuts- the sooner they get this budget out of the way, the better.
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Given the small amount of subsidy for this scheme, its a good opportunity to see the value of it, rather than just the cost.

 

[Ken H]

But then how people NEED to take short bus journeys that don't get free travel through age or disability? If people chose to take such short journeys rather than walk, I don't see why they should get a cheap fare.

I agree about the connection fare issue between bus and rail in London, which pushes people to either use rail OR buses, rather than both for a single journey..

I sometimes use the bus for very short hops round Airedale. Remember, the hospital has some appointments for day surgery at 7am. Walking from Steeton cross roads or Sutton Lane End where its free on street parking is a bit far for many. And ENCTS pases are still 1.5 hours away from start time.

 

[gc4946]

A lot of industries and businesses have loyalty schemes to reward frequent customers – why should public transport be any different?
If we want to be serious about encouraging people to give up driving and switch to public transport then we need to properly incentivise that, and giving discounted fares to people who uses buses and trains the most is a great way to do that.
Single fares only unfairly penalises people who have to change buses to reach their destination – eg, in Leeds, people living in Chapel Allerton wanting to go across town to the White Rose shopping centre have a direct bus so would only pay a single fare, where people living in other suburbs like Headingley, Kirkstall or Halton, who are travelling exactly the same distance, have to change buses in the centre and so would have to pay more under your plan.

In many cities around the world you can buy a single journey which allows free transfers within a specified time limit, in some cases allowing multi-modal interchange without extra penalty. London does that with its hopper fare on its buses.

 

[miklcct]

In many cities around the world you can buy a single journey which allows free transfers within a specified time limit, in some cases allowing multi-modal interchange without extra penalty. London does that with its hopper fare on its buses.

However London doesn't do multi modal hopper fare. It means that I have to pay double to use a bus instead of going much further for a Jubilee line connection off the Overground for a journey from Clapham Junction to Willesden Green, despite that the actual distance travelled is much shorter, because the fare isn't distance based.

 

[lookapigeon]

How is it that TFL can do one-way fares at £1.75 apiece, with a 1hr hopper transfer and £5.25 for an all day bus pass?

 

[WelshBluebird]

How is it that TFL can do one-way fares at £1.75 apiece, with a 1hr hopper transfer and £5.25 for an all day bus pass?

I'm not sure what the finances are like post covid but my understanding is that beforehand at least other things (mainly the tube, plus congestion charge etc) made enough money to be able to provide a pretty big subsidy to the bus operation.

 

[AlastairFraser]

How is it that TFL can do one-way fares at £1.75 apiece, with a 1hr hopper transfer and £5.25 for an all day bus pass?

1). Patronage (which is naturally very strong in areas of London with a dense population and poor Tube connections).
2). Cross-subsidy from the Tube - the weaker parts of the network are heavily subsidised by TfL profit on the Tube side of the operation. Occasionally there are frequency cuts or bus route reorganisation to make better use of resources and reduce the subsidy needed.

 

[johncrossley]

In general, London fares are amongst the highest and least subsidised in the world. But people only focus on the bus only single fare.

 

[gc4946]

£350m is very little in the grand scheme of things, increasing the cap to £2.50 and then £3 would be far more sensible

I' agree with that, it's an upfront, explicit central government subsidy meeting economic and social objectives.
What would be desirable are incentives to increase bus patronage and targets set in return for increasing the fare cap. Subsidy would be tapered off once bus usage reasches pre-Covid levels.
It could mean greater use of tap and cap.
3.4 billion local bus passenger journeys in England were made in 2022-2023 (2023-2024 figures not yet available)
However 4.1 billion local bus passenger journeys were made in 2019-2020 before Covid.

Bus Statistics — Bus Centre of Excellence

www.buscentreofexcellence.org.uk

 

[Deerfold]

I sometimes use the bus for very short hops round Airedale. Remember, the hospital has some appointments for day surgery at 7am. Walking from Steeton cross roads or Sutton Lane End where its free on street parking is a bit far for many. And ENCTS pases are still 1.5 hours away from start time.

To be fair, from Steeton Cross Roads, the fare is only £1 on 4 of the 5 buses each hour (all of the 2 or 3 evening/Sunday services).

 

[WildNorthlands]

Given the current government’s preference for publicly owned services,
perhaps link the cap to a move towards public ownership i.e. start the process and you can keep the cap?

 

[Bayum]

The Torygraph reporting it will be scrapped. I’ve not got access to the article.

Torygraph: £2 far will be scrapped

 

[1D54]

Torygraph?

 

[Joe Paxton]

The Torygraph reporting it will be scrapped. I’ve not got access to the article.

Torygraph: £2 far will be scrapped

That article has already been posted on this thread by Taxi Hupefi in post #312, along with some follow up discussion.

 

[Deerfold]

The Torygraph reporting it will be scrapped. I’ve not got access to the article.

Torygraph: £2 far will be scrapped

The headline reports that. The article says no decision has been made.

 

[Teapot42]

The Torygraph are today doom-mongering by saying the fare on the 840 will go from £4 to £25. The detail in the article says it might, and such a large change isn't likely to happen soon, but that doesn't stop their headline writers of course! Sorry I can't link, it's behind a paywall. (Although accessible if you disable Javascript)

There is also an interesting thread on Twitter from Dan Neidle about ways to raise tax, which includes the observation that adding £5 to VED would raise around £200m a year. He says that this is unlikely to happen as it will affect the 'working people' that Labour don't want to impact, however it seems to me that adding a tenner would more than pay for the bus fare cap, thus allowing them to say that working people can choose the bus instead so won't be affected.

 

[Trainman40083]

The Torygraph are today doom-mongering by saying the fare on the 840 will go from £4 to £25. The detail in the article says it might, and such a large change isn't likely to happen soon, but that doesn't stop their headline writers of course! Sorry I can't link, it's behind a paywall. (Although accessible if you disable Javascript)

There is also an interesting thread on Twitter from Dan Neidle about ways to raise tax, which includes the observation that adding £5 to VED would raise around £200m a year. He says that this is unlikely to happen as it will affect the 'working people' that Labour don't want to impact, however it seems to me that adding a tenner would more than pay for the bus fare cap, thus allowing them to say that working people can choose the bus instead so won't be affected.

I guess whatever happens will show whether they favour the car driver, or the bus user. Surely an increase in fuel duty is more likely, so the price of everything in the shops can be increased; then more VAT too.

 

[8ace]

Personally I'd like to see them introduce road pricing - that should be plenty to pay for the £2 cap.

 

[K4016td]

Personally I'd like to see them introduce road pricing

Great if you fancy living in an orwellian country. As this would mean even more cameras everywhere and recording every journey you make.

 

[8ace]

Not an issue for me as I walk, bus and train most of the time never had the desire/need to own a car in my life.

 

[Trainman40083]

Great if you fancy living in an orwellian country. As this would mean even more cameras everywhere and recording every journey you make.

Maybe even more cloned cars, without tax and insurance as people try to dodge paying. All actions have consequences

 

[A S Leib]

Great if you fancy living in an orwellian country

I'm not saying that road pricing would be popular, but you need to bear in mind that you're talking about a country where a quarter of the population backed permanent nightclub closures during Covid. Of course, "people who drive" is a much larger group than "people who go to nightclubs".

I think the future of the £2 bus fare cap should be based around ensuring that local authorities are able to raise sufficient funds to subsidise buses to the level they desire. I've also heard (can't remember in this thread or elsewhere) that the cap's an issue for routes which are getting lower subsidies than the fares would have been based on 2019 revenue, and in areas only served by uncapped routes (e.g. places only served by the X74 Jedburgh – Newcastle, although as a cross-border route that's slightly different to begin with).

 

[Mikey C]

Off topic, but road pricing will have to come in at some point to replace the massive sums raised from fuel duty.

 

[PGAT]

Literally 1984

 

[RT4038]

I'm not saying that road pricing would be popular, but you need to bear in mind that you're talking about a country where a quarter of the population backed permanent nightclub closures during Covid. Of course, "people who drive" is a much larger group than "people who go to nightclubs".

I would suggest that the general population's view of nightclubs is not comparable to that of road pricing, not matter how sensible the theory of road pricing might be.

 

[Ianigsy]

The Torygraph are today doom-mongering by saying the fare on the 840 will go from £4 to £25. The detail in the article says it might, and such a large change isn't likely to happen soon, but that doesn't stop their headline writers of course! Sorry I can't link, it's behind a paywall. (Although accessible if you disable Javascript)

It’s for reasons such as this that any transition away from a flat fare system has to be well thought out - it would just kill non-concessionary revenue from the service (which isn’t the highest in the first three months of the year when it’s cold, wet and dark) and the losers at the end of the day would be those people who use the service to go about their daily business.

 

[JKP]

I'm not saying that road pricing would be popular, but you need to bear in mind that you're talking about a country where a quarter of the population backed permanent nightclub closures during Covid. Of course, "people who drive" is a much larger group than "people who go to nightclubs".

I think the future of the £2 bus fare cap should be based around ensuring that local authorities are able to raise sufficient funds to subsidise buses to the level they desire. I've also heard (can't remember in this thread or elsewhere) that the cap's an issue for routes which are getting lower subsidies than the fares would have been based on 2019 revenue, and in areas only served by uncapped routes (e.g. places only served by the X74 Jedburgh – Newcastle, although as a cross-border route that's slightly different to begin with).

The contract for the X74 is minimum cost so it is Northumberland Council who are bearing any fall in revenue not the operator.

 

[ChrisC]

If the government decides to completely scrap the £2 fare cap at the end of December, what are bus companies most likely to do? Will they go back to exactly the same fare structures for pricing single fares as 2 years ago? There is, of course 2 years worth quite high of inflation to consider which would result in fares being much higher than 2 years ago. The price of day tickets has continued to rise with inflation during the period of the £2 cap. My local Stagecoach day ticket was £7.90 at the end of 2022. During the last 2 years this first rose to £8.50 and more recently another increase to £9.50. Is there any chance that some individual bus companies will initially price single fares at a level lower than they were before the £2 cap to soften the blow.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Great if you fancy living in an orwellian country. As this would mean even more cameras everywhere and recording every journey you make.

Depends how you do it. Can be an annual charge based on your odometer at MOT time, or it can be tolls on motorways and city centres.