Without wishing to stray too far off topic, the general reporting around this rise, both here and in the wider media, after just two years of a capped fare shows the immense difficulty a government of any colour will have raising fuel duty again after 14 years of freeze. Some of the headlines - I can think of one local journalism example in particular - are excessive, as are the usual row of people who can be rolled out to say how much this rise is going to trap them in their homes - having seemingly forgotten that had it not been introduced, the fares would already have been more than the capped rate in a lot of cases. Let's also not forget that had Rishi Sunak not "found" some money down the back of the HS2 sofa, we'd have had a £3 cap for 6 months by now, and possibly no cap at all.
My single fare pre-cap was £4.10, so I'm still benefitting (indeed, nearly my entire route, a mere 25 minutes in length, has a £3 fare, because Arriva's fares are so expensive... the new "short hop" of £1.90 takes you three stops from the town centre!). I suspect many people in this area will consider it is still a lower fare than it could have been, and accept it for what it is, as the choices here are "bus" or "drive". Even once in town, the shortest one-stop fares (which few people would buy) are £3.60 single and £4.10 return... with all the faff of getting to the out of the town centre stations (uphill from town), 6 unevenly spaced trains an hour, £6 return for 10 evenly spaced buses an hour doesn't seem like a bad choice!
I appreciate there are people for whom every penny really does count, but experience tells me they are very rarely the ones who go alerting all and sundry to their plight all over social and local media. The people with real problems are sitting at home, trying to work out how to make their journeys as cost-effective as possible.
