Should Bus Travel be Free

[GRALISTAIR]

For large parts of the country having a bus service at all would be a start.

Indeed so! However, in my UK home of Preston, bus network is not bad.

 

[stevieinselby]

Yet another attack on pensioners and on one of the few remaining perks of having an ENCTS pass.

ENCTS has already been significantly devalued. Pass holders used to save £5 and more per journey. Now cut to a £2 saving. Diabolical.

Why does everything have to be a race to the bottom? Why are some people only happy when they can punch down?
It is not an attack on pensioners – pensioners would not be losing anything from this change.

When the generation who has had more given to them than any other – who has had more opportunities to buy their own home, to benefit from free university tuition, and to enjoy a long and prosperous retirement than any generation before them or after them – it sticks in the craw somewhat to see them having a temper tantrum because someone, somewhere might be getting the same as them. Not getting anything better than them, but just getting the same as them.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2024 ==

£1 bus fares minimum for short central journeys yes I agree but how do you enforce it especially when changing drivers? Nothing should be totally free in life and even my 80 year old mum has said for 15 odd years she’d be happy to pay a minimum 50p per trip.

The problem is that a nominal fare like that would see a very significant proportion of the income received lost in admin, and it would not actually bring in much money at all, especially if it deterred some passengers from travelling.
(Sometimes very small charges can be a big deterrent because people perceive them as petty or pointless – they seem like unnecessary hassle that is disproportionate to the amount raised)

It would be particularly unhelpful for long interurban services where the commercial single fare could be well north of £10 – a 50p contribution is a drop in the ocean, and will make no meaningful difference to the economics of the operation.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Jul 2024 ==

For me the question of the price of buses should be a wider question: Should all local transport cost for local people?

Imagine local taxes are raised and local rail and bus transport is fully subsidised by the combined authority or whatever. Rather than scanning my contactless or Oyster, I scan a residents card of some sort. If I’m not a local, I use contactless or cash if needed, as I’m not paying by tax. Likely loads more public transport journeys made, because everyone is paying so there’s every incentive to use it for, effectively, free, rather an a car that I need to pay Petrol, parking and a congestion charge for. So more locals using rail and bus rather than car hopefully

The difficulty is defining "local" in a way that is consistent, meaningful and enforceable.

Local authority? It becomes a postcode lottery – some council areas are huge while others (especially but not exclusively in major conurbations) are tiny. Even if you allowed places like West Midlands, Greater Manchester etc to operate a regional pass, you're still going to have a lot of inconsistencies.

It also means that a lot of people wouldn't have free access to their main regional centre, even ignoring those conurbations. For example – I live in Selby, North Yorkshire. My nearest main regional centre is York, which is 15 miles away, and that doesn't seem an unreasonable journey to be included as "local" ... but York is one council, North Yorkshire is another, so unless there were reciprocal arrangements or some kind of cross-border acceptance, it wouldn't be counted. Many unitary authorities within a rural hinterland are in a similar situation (Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stoke, Hull to name but a few). To make it more complicated, North Yorkshire would be divided into three de facto separate areas – Selby, Ryedale & Scarborough, and Hambleton Craven & Richmond – as all public transport routes between those areas pass through other council areas en route, whether that's York, West Yorkshire or Teesside.