Fury as £2 bus fare cap faces axe in Budget – meaning some face £10 rise
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/fury-2-bus-fare-cap-33980072
by Codydoc4
Fury as £2 bus fare cap faces axe in Budget – meaning some face £10 rise
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/fury-2-bus-fare-cap-33980072
by Codydoc4
30 comments
Oh good. I was thinking my life really needs just a bit more expense.
Really feels like this government is on my side.
Would be a big disappointment if they got rid of this, it’s helped so many people get out and about for cheap.
Out of interest i buy blocks of tickets on the app that last 12 month until activated (currently £20 for 10 tickets).
Wonder if you could buy loads now and still use them if the scheme is scrapped
I own a car, but I prefer to use public transport for going to work because it allows me to avoid the ball ache of getting parked in the city. A big jump in the fare price would make me reconsider though.
Hitting workers at the very bottom hardest. _The Labour way._
My wife currently pays £4 to get to and from work. Uncapped the fare would be about £8. With taxes, that will equate to about an hours salary to get a bus to work.
To add to the pain, her employer only offers 4.5 hour shifts. With the commute – 6 hours work for 3.5 hours salary.
Might as well not bother.
Sounds like the right time to embrace Work from Home combined with Tax Deductible or Work Compensation for all work related travel.
Uk has some of the most expensive train fares compared to Europe but we need the title of most expensive bus fare just to get the title.
Lots of people use public transport to get to and from work so abusing them and charging more is pretty shocking in reality.
I was under the impression it was ending at the end of the year anyway, Arriva in my area have had notices on buses since September to say so.
I absolutely support heavily subsidised public transport to encourage social mobility, reduce traffic and improve the local economy (and getting people out and about for their mental health and the general wellbeing of society). I’d even go so far as making buses free at the point of purchase since the time lost checking passes and buying tickets is incredibly inefficient and creates traffic.
But as a country we need to have an honest conversation about how much we’re willing to lose on public transport because it will never be profit generating (outside of big cities at least) or even close to breaking even in most places. If we’re going to funnel tax payer money to private companies then we need to have a clear picture of what level of service we expect and a model that delivers that standard cost effectively but with the expectation that it costs taxpayers money one way or another. As cheap as possible is not the same thing as cost effective.
Surely if (as the article suggests) the cap isn’t financially beneficial. You would increase the cap a little, rather that scrap it entirely?
A ridiculously short sighted policy that will do little to help budgets, do damage to those with the narrowest shoulders, and will be a PR disaster for the government.
Getting an aneurysm now. £2 bus fare was a very good idea.
This really only applies to those of us who live outside London. London will still have the cheapest and best bus services in Britain.
It’s these fatcats riding the bus everywhere for cheap! That’s where this famous black hole in the economy is coming from!
Phew that was a close one guys, glad we’re cracking down on these awful scroungers. Now, finally, we can prosper as a nation.
This is the most anti-Labour policy I can imagine. Labour was always meant to help the working people. People who uses buses are generally the poorest workers for whom every pound in their pocket matters.
If the £2 cap was so unaffordable, surely is would have been better to raise it slightly than abolish it completely.
How much is this actually saving anyway?
And just like that, an enormous amount of part time jobs cease to be viable for the people who need them most. Great.
£2 bus fare was brilliant. Anything which moves people from the car to the bus is brilliant. Public transport should be cheap and accessible to all.
> The Chancellor is expected to abolish the cost-of-living lifeline in order to save the Treasury £350 million a year. But campaigners warn this would be a disaster.
Remember when we were dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the European Union over lies that we would save £350 million a week by doing so?
And now we have a Labour chancellor making cutbacks that not even the Tories were cruel enough to pull off, just to make less than 2% of the alleged savings that nuked our EU membership.
I cannot stand this government. When I voted Labour four months ago, it was not because I wanted another five years of austerity.
Someone was shouting at me the other day that labour were the party of the working class… I’m yet to see it.
This a huge mistake! The £2 bus fare is incredible, during my (unpaid) nursing placements it only cost £4 to go there and come back without having to worry about having to drive and park up somewhere. While I hate the bus it’s important in reducing congestion and reducing car pollution. What a shortsighted moronic decision, I thought they cared about public transport and the environment.
What the actual fuck.
On my days off it’s safer for me to use the bus because I’m night shift and getting tired by the time I get errands done in the day…
It’s a way for me to go home, then maybe go into the city safely. Or, on a day off without worrying about driving tired, or parking.
It’s not cheap as it is to use the bus. It’s hardly more convenient, but it’s better than messing about.
Shit like this is why people just go fuckit, and buy cars.
Want people to use public transport, stop making it daylight robbery.
Could they not just increase the cap from £2 to £3?
I have no other way to get to my job than the bus. Trains don’t get to my job and even if I did use the train I’d have to walk through a dangerous area in town in the dark to get to work. I don’t make a lot of money so don’t get to leave my house very often unless I use a bus. This is quite worrying for me and I don’t understand how labour would make such a change when they claim they are the party of working people.
Just raise the cap to £3/4 if it’s costing us that much money, be better off as cutting personal tax free allowance down by half and reintroducing the 10% tax band for lower earners.
I guarentee that if bus fare increases, the wages for bus drivers, depot mechanics, engineers, etc will all remain stagnant.
The £2 bus fare cap has been fantastic where I live. It means taking the bus is actually a viable option, whereas before it was prohibitively expensive (especially given the added inconvenience). The bus network where I live sucks, but encouraging more people to use it might actually make it better.
Investment into public transport offers incredible value for money. Getting cars off the road reduces congestion, pollution and damage to road surfaces, plus makes it easier for people to get to work or go shopping. The issue with governments (any of them), is they like to look at things in isolation rather than the bigger picture. Public transport doesn’t need to generate a profit because it can facilitate economic benefits elsewhere, not to mention benefits to people’s mental health by allowing people who don’t drive to actually places.
And I was just starting to use the bus some more. Ah well, back to the car it is
Thanks Rachel Reeves. I’d missed those days the bus fare in my hometown was £5.50 instead of £2. Really doing a great one for the working people here. Thanks again.
That’s a lot of words when the most important one in the first paragraph is *if* and not mentioned anywhere here. It’s pure speculation.
Funny how we all considered the £2 charge to be such a good thing as it was so much cheaper than the usual price. But go to America, go pretty much anywhere in Europe and the full
price will most likely be less than £2. We get ripped off constantly here, that we consider high prices to be a bargain.
Bus prices here are insane for such poor service. Just like trains I suppose.
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