Senior Bus Passes

[GusB]

I was notified that my card was expiring last year and had to explicitly request renewal. As we oldies have a distressing habit of dropping off the perch it seems perfectly reasonable not to mail out new cards automatically.

Here, Bracknell, our bus passes are valid for five years, not two. They are combined with our library card and the local e+ discount system as well as the organ donor scheme which presumably have their own requirements.

Combining pensioner passes and donor cards seems like a rather sensible idea; one kicks in when the other stops being regularly used

 

[Dwarfer1979]

But not an issue for the bus company and it promotes increased travel on a service that might not be viable. Overall it helps the local economy. I would not be surprised that, using "value for money", it boosts the local economy by much more than it costs the local council.

Not strictly true because if the council are struggling for funding then you will likely see a reduced reimbursement so operators will see income (across the country during my career I have seen reimbursement rates that vary from 25% to 75% of average adult fare, anything less than 60% probably means the bus operator is effectively subsidising the scheme). It is eminently possible where reimbursement is at the low end to have a full bus and still be losing money if most of those passengers are travelling on free passes.

Going back about 15 years I know Derbyshire, largely due to travel into the Peak District from neighbouring conurbations like Manchester & South Yorkshire plus visiting tourists, were subsidising the scheme by over £1 million a year - by which it is meant that DCC were having to put that much in from their own council tax above the allocated funding from central government whose scheme it was - entirely due to the government not counting the peak district as tourist destination so they didn't allocate the same sort of extra money to reflect the higher proportion of non-resident travel due to tourists as many coastal authorities received. I can't imagine the situation has improved that much in the following years that this isn't still an issue.

 

[Trainman40083]

Combining pensioner passes and donor cards seems like a rather sensible idea; one kicks in when the other stops being regularly used

I am sure many won't find that funny. That said, I've had a donor card since my 20s. If the worst happened, it would be the greatest gift I could give a stranger.

 

[DelW]

In London, the bus company does not get the passenger revenue for any passenger. This all goes to TfL. As the ENCTS pass does not record on TfL supplied ticket machines, TfL takes the hit on not getting re-imbursement (effectively from DfT via London Boroughs) for actual 'out of town' pass usage [there is probably some notional payment based on surveys done at some point]. I guess they have concluded that the cost of modifying ticket machines / software is far greater than the re-imbursement foregone.

Although ENCTS passes won't work TfL bus machines, passengers using them are required to show them to the driver, who is supposed to press a button in the cab to record each journey. When I've used my out-of-town card in London, sometimes I see the driver do so, sometimes not. That ought to give TfL some figures for such usage.

I'm another one with 5 year validity but no auto renewal. I can re-apply either online or via the local library. My current one (valid until 2030) still has the photo from my first in 2015.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

One problem in the north west is that affluent Cheshire pensioners who wouldn’t dream of using the bus locally, obtain an ENCTS pass solely for when they visit London, where of course TfL equipment will only read Freedom passes.

What is the "North-West problem" that you make reference to above? Has this "problem" caused any real problems or are you just betraying your personal feelings by your usage of the Cheshire area in the terminology of your posting?At the age of 80, I can recall that people very many years ago who took delight in using the term "Leafy lanes of Cheshire", gave the impression that they lived in an aboreally-frre zone...

From tomorrow, users of TfGM-issued ENCTS passes on Mondays to Fridays have had the 09:30 start time completely lifted on the area Bee Network, after two separate monthly trials were carried out and the findings evaluated. This will annoy those who arrange hospital appointments for the elderly, as they are noted for arranging pre-09:30 hospital appointments for elderly people.

 

[contrex]

On a Ticketer machine it shows the history of when the card is tapped in

I once used my over-60 pass to travel from Bristol to Keynsham to do something quick in the High Street, crossed the road, and got the next bus back. When I got on a local bus in Bristol, and tapped my card, the driver looked at his screen, and said 'You didn't spend long in Keynsham, did you?'.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Mar 2026 ==

If you have a Derby pass and board in the Nottingham area, Nottingham pays.

Didn't I hear once that Preston council has to pay a considerable amount because pensioners out on a jolly change buses there, the bus station being a bit of a hub?

 

[Joshua_Harman]

As I understand it there’s a record kept by the bus company who have a record of all the taps from a specific pass, and will see the number 633597……… but this isn’t fed anywhere afaik so if the police or council wanted to obtain a history of where the pass has been used, say to combat fraud, then they’d have to ask each individual company for a history of the card, and then compile those separate lists into one big list,

That’s when it’s tapped,as mine doesn’t seem to work away from my usual area.

 

[Buzby]

Passes in Scotland require the user to state their destination. This provides an audit trail of the card holder of where they boarded and where they stated they would alight (there’s no requirement to tap off… yet). As for accessing the journey data, I started to try but gave up with too many intermediaries. My Council employs SPT to manage, issue and administer the cards in my area and that of a couple of other council areas. Funds come from Transport Scotland and SPT pass on payments to the transport firms based on their usage figures.

 

[Simon75]

Passes in Scotland require the user to state their destination. This provides an audit trail of the card holder of where they boarded and where they stated they would alight (there’s no requirement to tap off… yet). As for accessing the journey data, I started to try but gave up with too many intermediaries. My Council employs SPT to manage, issue and administer the cards in my area and that of a couple of other council areas. Funds come from Transport Scotland and SPT pass on payments to the transport firms based on their usage figures.

This happened in England for pensioners and disabled to state the destination, which i believe was due to bus companies paid for up to destination. And bus tickets had the destination on. Some tickets has end route destination rather than passengers destination
Eg Stafford to Lichfield, ticket said Lichfield even if you stated Rugeley

You still get the odd person stating there destination.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Over the very many years that my late wife and I were away on holidays in different parts of England, the area where the use of the TfGM-issued ENCTS passes gave most enjoyment was on the Southern Vectis bus services in the Isle of Wight.

 

[Buzby]

This happened in England for pensioners and disabled to state the destination, which i believe was due to bus companies paid for up to destination. And bus tickets had the destination on.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist but a few years ago (despite stating the alighting point) the supplied ticket showed the terminus. No big deal for ‘flat-fare’ journeys, but the cost (if you paid cash) could be as high as double the requested fare. Over a year I noted that almost 80% of my travelled journeys were showing the destination. As I assumed it was a way for transport firms to claw back the full amount rather than the 50% discounted concession rate, I sent a spreadsheet to SPT suggesting TOTO be introduced.

My eventual reply was that they ‘regularly audit’ the process with their staff travelling sample routes. This found no areas of concern. I then had the good fortune to see how they did this. They would be allocated a route, say hello to the driver on boarding, and wearing a fetching orange jacket. Every time a concession pass was used, they would seek out that passrnger and ask to see their card, whereupon they would scan it, say thanks and hand it back, awaiting the next customer.

i pointed out to Transport Scotland that a driver, knowing he was being checked, would not issue a ‘terminus’ ticket, so their methodology was somewhat flawed. They didn’t respond. Clearly they didn’t’ care or had no wish to rock the boat. Despite making extensive use of buses in the last 4 years, I have never been audited again. This tallies with the removal of issuing paper tickets for concession card users, where I cannot see the Ticketer screen to verify if my journey was correctly recorded. If they cannot be bothered, then neither can I!

 

[Dwarfer1979]

I’m not a conspiracy theorist but a few years ago (despite stating the alighting point) the supplied ticket showed the terminus. No big deal for ‘flat-fare’ journeys, but the cost (if you paid cash) could be as high as double the requested fare. Over a year I noted that almost 80% of my travelled journeys were showing the destination. As I assumed it was a way for transport firms to claw back the full amount rather than the 50% discounted concession rate, I sent a spreadsheet to SPT suggesting TOTO be introduced.

My eventual reply was that they ‘regularly audit’ the process with their staff travelling sample routes. This found no areas of concern. I then had the good fortune to see how they did this. They would be allocated a route, say hello to the driver on boarding, and wearing a fetching orange jacket. Every time a concession pass was used, they would seek out that passrnger and ask to see their card, whereupon they would scan it, say thanks and hand it back, awaiting the next customer.

i pointed out to Transport Scotland that a driver, knowing he was being checked, would not issue a ‘terminus’ ticket, so their methodology was somewhat flawed. They didn’t respond. Clearly they didn’t’ care or had no wish to rock the boat. Despite making extensive use of buses in the last 4 years, I have never been audited again. This tallies with the removal of issuing paper tickets for concession card users, where I cannot see the Ticketer screen to verify if my journey was correctly recorded. If they cannot be bothered, then neither can I!

May be different in Scotland so I can't comment on your specific concerns but for my English based career I think the last authority my employers deal with to base reimbursement on the actual journey of the card holder stopped doing that over 15 years ago (which is why operators stopped asking for or recording your destination as it made no difference to anything - there was a period where we kept asking as it was hoped to be a tool to get higher reimbursement by showing longer distance travel than average but it didn't work so we stopped asking). Reimbursement in England is either an agreed fixed sum that doesn't change regardless of how many are travelling, known as fixed pot payment, or based on an agreed fixed per passenger payment not related to the trip actually made by the card holder but based on the average adult fare (including returns, days and often weekly sales where the price is divided by a set usage figure of 2, 3/4 & something like 8 respectively to give a per trip cost) reduced by a set 'generation factor' (which is where the references to reimbursement rates of 25-70% come from as that is what amount of the average adult fare the operator actually receives per trip which will vary from area to area & operator to operator).

One thing to remember when looking at these issues, again not getting into specifics of an actual experience I can't comment on, is that bus fares don't increase exponentially (they hit a cap or maximum often quite quickly) nor do they progress in a linear progression (so fares increase quickly over short distances but those bands widen as you travel further even where there are lots of stages) and ticket machines will often offer the furthest point of a fare band on the front 'quick' menu that is easier for a driver to issue than going through the full stage list to find the specific stop you request that is the same price as one several miles further on. It is also unlikely for the vast majority of operators to give any instruction to commit what is fraud rather than driver laziness of using the quick menu for a trip not involving cash handling to save a couple of seconds because they don't think or know it matters.

 

[Tim33160]

TfGM Older and disabled people celebrate end of the ‘Twirlies’ as 9.30am rule for free bus travel lifted​

Older and disabled people are celebrating as the phenomenon of the ‘Twirly’ finally comes to an end on the Bee Network – giving passholders free round-the-clock travel on all buses in Greater Manchester.

The ‘Twirlies’ got their nickname by trying to use their concessionary bus passes before 9.30am, but due to a government restriction, they would be told: “Sorry love, yer twirly” (too early).

However, from this weekend, older and disabled concessionary passholders will no longer have to wait until 9.30am to get on board a bus in Greater Manchester as the time restriction for free travel is permanently lifted on Sunday, 1 March.

https://news.tfgm.com/press-release...ies-as-9-30am-rule-for-free-bus-travel-lifted

 

[Haywain]

TfGM Older and disabled people celebrate end of the ‘Twirlies’ as 9.30am rule for free bus travel lifted​

Older and disabled people are celebrating as the phenomenon of the ‘Twirly’ finally comes to an end on the Bee Network – giving passholders free round-the-clock travel on all buses in Greater Manchester.

The ‘Twirlies’ got their nickname by trying to use their concessionary bus passes before 9.30am, but due to a government restriction, they would be told: “Sorry love, yer twirly” (too early).

However, from this weekend, older and disabled concessionary passholders will no longer have to wait until 9.30am to get on board a bus in Greater Manchester as the time restriction for free travel is permanently lifted on Sunday, 1 March.

https://news.tfgm.com/press-release...ies-as-9-30am-rule-for-free-bus-travel-lifted

The crucial part of that, for most of us, is hidden away at the bottom of the page:

The lifting of time restrictions only applies to travel by bus using a concessionary pass issued by Transport for Greater Manchester under the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme.

 

[satters]

Diamond have a "twirly bird" fare with a pass before 9:30, currently £1.50 in Worcestershire, £2 in the WMPTE area

 

[Glasgowbusguy]

In Scotland the defo can be tracked and I have been involved in a missing person case where police tracked the pass then used onboard CCTV

 

[Buzby]

In Scotland the defo can be tracked and I have been involved in a missing person case

Clearly the data exists, but how ‘centralised’ is it? You can ask TfL for your travel history and view it online. Concession cards are issued by Councils (or their nominated supplier - like SPT in the West). Would a GDPR request to ??? bring forward the travel history users are seemingly denied by other means?

 

[Mark L]

I travel regularly on the entire 80 minute route from Bournemouth to Swanage on my pass & feel mildly guilty of the cost to Bournemouth council.
But I have been told the council only have to pay the marginal cost of my journey.

The marginal cost of carrying me on a three quarters full bus is almost zero.
Whereas the cost of a potential passenger, & their fare, bring turned away on the half hourly service if the bus is totally full because I am aboard means my marginal cost is the full bus fare.
The company has lost the fare of the turned away passenger if they are not prepared to wait another half hour...because of me.

Is the marginal cost story true & if so how is it calculated? It must satisfy the bus operators as they all accept pensioner bus passes.

The reimbursement is calculated in such a way that the operator is neither better nor worse off. There is an underlying assumption that a number of journeys would not have taken place in the absence of the ENCTS card. The reimbursement is therefore lower than the average fare paid.

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say it “satisfies” operators - they accept the pass because the law says they must! By contrast there is no legal obligation to participate in the £3.00 English fare cap. A number of smaller operators have refused to take part in this - many have cited the unsatisfactory reimbursement rate as a reason.

 

[matchmaker]

My Scottish pass doesn't have an expiry date (I've had it for over 8 years) and I've never been given a ticket on First East Scotland, Midland Bluebird or the Stirling Park and ride.

 

[Busmansholiday]

An interesting discussion, I have a South Yorkshire pass, but about 95% of it's use is outside their area. My sister has a Suffolk pass and 100% of her usage is in South Yorkshire. About the only useful thing I can think of that has happened for pensioners in recent years.

 

[Falcon1200]

My Scottish pass doesn't have an expiry date (I've had it for over 8 years) and I've never been given a ticket on First East Scotland, Midland Bluebird or the Stirling Park and ride.

My Scottish bus pass also has no expiry date, but we did used to be given tickets on McGills in the West of Scotland, however that stopped post-Covid.

 

[Buzby]

My Scottish pass doesn't have an expiry date (I've had it for over 8 years) and I've never been given a ticket on First East Scotland, Midland Bluebird or the Stirling Park and ride.

When they were introduced they required renewal every 4 years, but this was changed with the introduction of the MyScotGov card design which removed the requirement to have an expiry date. Now the only reason to replace is a failure of the chip (or embedded aerial).

Tickets for concessions were stopped in March 2023 across the board, I find it is the odd independent firms who still issue them, but this is the exception.

 

[ejstubbs]

Passes in Scotland require the user to state their destination.

Not the case on Lothian buses, which have a flat fare structure. I assume* you still have to state your destination on Lothian Country or East Coast Buses services.

Which makes we wonder: does Lothian Buses get reimbursed for every journey on an NEC card within a given day, or is there a sort of virtual "tap-tap-cap" which only records/reimburses, say, the first three journeys? (And likewise for more than eleven journeys within a week.)

* Since I never use these services, I can't speak from experience.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Mar 2026 ==

My Scottish pass doesn't have an expiry date

My original NEC used to have an expiry date that was displayed up on the card reader, but I lost that card a while back and noticed recently that the card readers now report "Expiry: Never" with my replacement card. I can't help thinking that that's a bit on the optimistic side...

 

[Buzby]

My original NEC used to have an expiry date that was displayed up on the card reader

It was also printed on the card itself!

 

[Falcon1200]

"Expiry: Never" with my replacement card. I can't help thinking that that's a bit on the optimistic side...

I don't know, medical science is always making advances....

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I don't know, medical science is always making advances....

Some of the British triumphal anthems that makes reference to a male monarch has the words...."May he live forever" and also "And he shall reign forever and ever"

 

[ejstubbs]

"And he shall reign forever and ever"

That line does not refer to a mortal king, it's from the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel's Messiah, and refers to Christ (or maybe God - but then again they're both part of the same triumvirate). Apparently it's a quote from the book of Revelation.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

That line does not refer to a mortal king, it's from the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel's Messiah, and refers to Christ (or maybe God - but then again they're both part of the same triumvirate). Apparently it's a quote from the book of Revelation.

Perhaps I had in mind the stricture that "the monarch ruled by divine right".

 

[contrex]

Perhaps I had in mind the stricture that "the monarch ruled by divine right".

It is certainly true that the monarch never dies - that upon death, the succession passes instantaneously to the next in line, there being no interregnum. I remember when Elizabeth died, a few rather tortuous explanations of this concept appeared in the media. I also remember as a boy reading in the Guinness Book of Records about the shortest amount of time a peerage was held, and it was the 'split second' that a court assumed that an heir survived his father when both died in a Blitz bomb incident.

 

[PeterC]

It is certainly true that the monarch never dies - that upon death, the succession passes instantaneously to the next in line, there being no interregnum. I remember when Elizabeth died, a few rather tortuous explanations of this concept appeared in the media. I also remember as a boy reading in the Guinness Book of Records about the shortest amount of time a peerage was held, and it was the 'split second' that a court assumed that an heir survived his father when both died in a Blitz bomb incident.

Which is why the royal standard is never flown at half mast.