'Free Buses'

[anthony263]

ow please dont give more people free travel. I have enough with my local bus service becoming an OAP's club and during peka hours you cant get a seat which isnt good if you have a 90 minute journey.

I have had the occasion where fare paying passengers have had a go at me because i had to refuse them entry because the bus was full of OAP' who had decided to spend the day traveling on the buses.

i think that it may be a good idea in principle but i dont think the buses could copeand i dont want bus companies cutting wages to boost their profits just so that some people can have free travel. The idea about students getting half price travel on the other hand should be introduced.

 

[Broken Viking]

The buses round here are packed with OAPs on free buses passes, which is all very well but paying passengers have had to be turned away many times. The buses are also not cheap either £4.10 single for 8 miles.

ow please dont give more people free travel. I have enough with my local bus service becoming an OAP's club and during peka hours you cant get a seat which isnt good if you have a 90 minute journey.

Obviously they're not policing the system very well in thy respective areas, then. Back when I had my Freedom pass (The type of pass under discussion here) I was only allowed to use it on local services after 09:30. If I wanted to travel before then, I had to pay full fare.

I agree though, one of the main issues is the number of seats taken up by OAPs and other pass users. When I used my pass, I would give priority in seating to fare-paying passengers as I was riding for free, and I normally prefer to stand on buses anyway. However many OAPs aren't able to stand as a rule (So that approach won't work) and I've been on a few buses around here during the afternoon peak that have had mainly OAPs occupying seats, and virtually no seating room left for other passengers.
Not too much of an issue for most fit and able passengers, perhaps...But a lot of parents (With small children) also use the buses around here, and they generally need seats just as much as any OAP.

It gets even worse on the other side of the Void as well, especially when ferrying people to their respective afterlives. Even though I use a fairly hefty adaptation of a Vanhool AGG-300 (Although mine has 12 full-length sections and four engines) over here for moving the departed about, the last six runs I've been doing between here and Heaven alone have been packed to capacity - And aye, a good 80% of passengers using the 960 available seats were OAPs on the concessionary travel scheme! hock:

Just out of curiosity: Whatever happened to Dial-a-Ride? That's generally alright for shopping trips (My grandmother uses her local one) and - Not running to a specific schedule and being adapted to accommodate frail and infirm passengers - It's better geared towards most OAP trips as well, I would've thought.

Farewell...
>> Death <<

 

[spoony]

Just out of intrest what do people currently pay for buses. I pay for a 28 day pass which is £75, that gets me unlimited bus, metro, train (Sunderland-Blaydon) and ferry in Tyne and Wear. Personally I think this is good value but if more free passes were given out Im sure this price would rise.

 

[Drsatan]

Too much in my humble opinion mate! The return from Romsey to Winchester on the x66 bus is about £5.60. Although it's cheaper than parking in Winchester it's poor value for money considering the bus only runs once an hour (used to be twice an hour, the 2nd bus was a RailLink service but SWT scrapped it in 2007) and you get the priviledge of travelling on a dirty bus. In an ideal world all interurban bus journeys would use coaches as is normally the case on the Continent, but probably won't happen.

In Majorca in July this year, I saw for myself how buses should be run. A single anywhere in Palma is 1.25 Euros, and for that you get a clean, air-conditioned bus with verbal and visual announcements notifying you of the next stop. One day, I took a bus from the bus station in Palma to Valdemossa to see the monastery where Chopin spent his last days. The journey only cost 4 Euros return for a half-hour trip, and for that you went in a double-decker coach. If buses were run in the same way in the UK then finally more people under 60/under 18 might use them.

 

[90019]

Too much in my humble opinion mate! The return from Romsey to Winchester on the x66 bus is about £5.60. Although it's cheaper than parking in Winchester it's poor value for money considering the bus only runs once an hour (used to be twice an hour, the 2nd bus was a RailLink service but SWT scrapped it in 2007) and you get the priviledge of travelling on a dirty bus. In an ideal world all interurban bus journeys would use coaches as is normally the case on the Continent, but probably won't happen.

For Lothian, it's a flat rate of £1.20 for a single (70p for a child) on any bus for any number of stops, or £3 (£2.50 for a child, IIRC) for a day ticket - unlimited travel on Lothian buses for that day (Excluding tours, Airlink and Night buses).
And for that you get a relatively clean bus (Lothian clean them all daily), with the oldest bus in normal service now being V reg, I think.

 

[spoony]

For Lothian, it's a flat rate of £1.20 for a single (70p for a child) on any bus for any number of stops, or £3 (£2.50 for a child, IIRC) for a day ticket - unlimited travel on Lothian buses for that day (Excluding tours, Airlink and Night buses).
And for that you get a relatively clean bus (Lothian clean them all daily), with the oldest bus in normal service now being V reg, I think.

Thats quite good, when I went to Dundee in April I was actually quite disgusted at how cheap the buses were

 

[Tom B]

For Lothian, it's a flat rate of £1.20 for a single (70p for a child) on any bus for any number of stops, or £3 (£2.50 for a child, IIRC) for a day ticket - unlimited travel on Lothian buses for that day (Excluding tours, Airlink and Night buses).
And for that you get a relatively clean bus (Lothian clean them all daily), with the oldest bus in normal service now being V reg, I think.

£2.40 for a child.

Lothian ridacards for an Adult are approx £15 for a week, £40 for a month, £400 for a year. Students get a couple of quid off.

On the other hand, FirstBus charge a stupid £55 for a month's travel in Doncaster - for a network which they are cutting back rapidly, for buses which they don't ever clean properly, and which have plenty of dodgy things wrong with them.
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Thats quite good, when I went to Dundee in April I was actually quite disgusted at how cheap the buses were

A lot of people are up in arms about it as it was £1 single for a long time. However, the tramworks have lead to the fares being increased (as the council want cross subsidy; and owing to the tramworks causing delays, more buses are needed to maintain the service).

 

[monkey]

...yeah I have to say I like lothian apart from the moody drivers. the flat fare is a good idea, was like that in istanbul when I went on holiday last year on the trams...

 

[scandal]

In principal I see nothing wrong with offering free bus travel to people that need it. As far as I can remember before the idea of nationwide roll out of free bus travel within England, those eligible for free bus travel were restricted to their local county area, something that seems logical to me. This system however like the current nationwide scheme I feel is unfair, like the winter fuel allowance anyone over the certain age no matter what their state of income or savings is issued with a free bus pass. Now surely its not fair to give an old person with a house, savings and private pension a free bus pass, whilst a job seeker or those on new deal with nothing to show for their life in terms of housing or savings has to pay the often since deregulation, expensive fares to seek work or going about day to day business such as visiting the bank.

This is where I take issue, I have no issue with the concept of free bus travel to people who need it, thsoe with disabilitys for example there is no debate on their entitlement to it. However I think the scheme needs to return to local county area restrictions depending on where you live. Secondly, the scheme needs to be means tested, those on low incomes should all be eligible, not just those over a certain age. Therefore only old persons on low incomes with little or no savings would be eligible, on the same token anyone outside education on new deal/job seekers or on a low income would also be eligble subject to savings. I think that those under 16 do have a pretty fair child fare policy, that should be extended to those under 18 provided they are in full time education and again I'd argue this to be continued to those in Higher Education, or at least a similar 34% off as Railcards give to railway travel. Lastly I would enforce the off peak restrictions off the pass to cover between 1600 and 1800, many buses are full around this time with standard commuters and farepayers, there really isnt the need to fill the seats pn these like the original idea of the scheme proposed, theres a morning peak restriction so why not the same in the evening?

So why am I saying this? Well really the main problem is not the green eyed monster but the fact that the funding gap between what the council pays to bus operators and the amount that the bus operators loose in revenue by carrying them, this gap is growing bigger every year and yep you guessed it the farepayer is picking up the bill. The idea behind the scheme seemed to be to fill up buses with people, now thats all well and good, but considering they are not paying to uese the bus, the operators are actually loosing out as highlighted in the funding gap, so just what is the point...