This is so good to see. Reducing bus fares around the country has always struck me as a bit of a no-brainer. It’s such a cheap thing for the government to do compared to other similar interventions. Improving busses in general, on cost, quality and regularity, is real low hanging fruit for improving people’s lives.
Sometimes I think governments don’t do it because it’s not interesting enough. But sometimes the boring, practical policies are the best.
This shows what can happen in areas where politicians believe that public transport should be a service for the public, not a profit driven business.
Mine have gone up, now £3:40 for a 10 minute trip.
The problem with bus prices is you are trying to compete with the value of my convenience.
Taking my car benefits me by:
-Comfort
-Door to door(ish)
-No waiting
-Not dealing with other people
-No lugging shopping on and off
-Heating/Aircon how I want
-Arrive and leave at my leisure
Bus operators need to work out how much that is worth to me, undercut it and £5 per fare isn’t it, even with fuel and parking the car taken into consideration.
The problem is magnified even moreso if the whole family want to go shopping, which we always do. There is no way that a £20 return fair is worth the sacrifice of convenience.
Great, except one of the largest operators, First, hasn’t signed up. Why wasn’t this mandatory?
Wish they’d do something similar for trains. I regularly drive for (regional) trips I’d rather take a train for because it’s so much more expensive to take the train. Unlikely with privatised services.
This is another edition of the much loved government tactic of “cut funding by £20m, then after the inevitable outcry, increase funding by £2m and brag about it”.
Unless you live in Leeds, where buses are apocalyptically shite. Fuck First bus, useless twats.
I would love this. A return ticket to the next town over is almost £5 and I live in a somewhat busy area (this is to say, I’m not 30 miles from the next village or something silly).
About time! I live in Nuneaton it costs £8.70 for a return journey of 4 miles within the borough because stagecoach have a monopoly. Travel to Coventry and it’s unlimited all day for £4 as they have competing companies.
It should be noted that as a side-effect, many fares that were previously less than £2 went up to £2.
I live in one of the areas which already does this, but I work just outside it. I can get a bus across the county for £2 one way which can take hours depending on the route, but a few times a week I have to pay over £6 for a day ticket for a 25 minute journey to work and back. I don’t go in often enough that a week ticket is cheaper.
Bizarrely there’s a bus from a couple of towns over which goes to the same destination and has the £2 fare.
I’m finally going to learn to drive after Christmas. I’ve avoided it so far because work was always easy to get to on the bus, but they’re cold, filthy, I can’t remember the last time one showed up on time, the drivers are grumpy, and the customer service is atrocious.
I always thought I was doing something good by taking the bus but it’s fucking awful.
Recently lost My car and have used the bus service. Genuinely surprised at a £7 return ticket for a 9 mile journey. It is far cheaper and more convenient to drive.
This is great, if they can actually run a reliable service. I’ve lived in places where they will happily miss 3 buses off the timetable in a row – it doesn’t matter how cheap it is, it isn’t suitable if you’re trying to get to work on time!
get rid of the non dom and give free bus travel for all.
Reminds me of the good old days when Thatcher banned “The People’s Republic of South Yorkshire” aka Sheffield from having low bus fares.
Capping the fare doesn’t make them reliable or run at useful times. I’d love to get the bus but the last one is at 5.05pm. I finish work at 5pm. The bus into work is at 8.40pm, and gets me into work 30 minutes late. Whereas I can drive and complete the journey in 15 minutes flat.
All that will happen is that these privately run franchises will cut even more “unprofitable” routes to make up any shortfall they don’t get from the government, so the only buses that will run in the future will be in the middle of the day to the shops.
Ours is already crap. I haven’t used a bus since I move out of London in 2002 because the service is so limited and appalling. 10 buses a day to the shops in the next town and nothing to any of the industrial/manufacturing estates where people work.
Is this really going to happen? Sounds too good to be true…
In major cities? Yes this may save car journeys. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff, Edinburgh.
In the rest of the country? Probably won’t make a difference.
I don’t use the bus to get to work *because there are no bus routes that go anywhere near my work*. Or trains, for that matter.
I have to drive to work because it’s the only option. It’s not about cost. A bus could be free but if it doesn’t go anywhere near where I need to go then I simply can’t use it.
And that’s something people ignore.
The bus fair for me is far to expensive. £10 return to town. It’s got crazy.
Brilliant… now all I need is a bus!
I wonder if they can they bring in the cap to school buses too, I pay way more than that for my kids school buses
Wouldn’t mind that happening where I live…
£2.30 to go roughly a mile…2 stops.
I’d love to use the bus more but it’d turn my 25 minute commute into at least 1h49m or, at worst, 2h22m.
Maybe if bus routes weren’t based solely on profit margins, car usage could really be reduced.
Genius, now maybe think abut running a bus service to our village – that has diddly squat – and I’ll think about using it
It’s great but ultimately how is it going to save car journeys? Pretty sure for the majority of people the buses are often late and are unreliable, I know round my neck of the woods they are, so it’s not going to provide much of an incentive.
They won’t save anything in the end if they keep not showing up/not stopping. I use the bus once a week to go into work and 40% of the time there is an issue with 20% of the time the bus just not showing up even if the screen in the station says it is coming.
When they say single fare I’m assuming they mean a one way ticket, so £4 for a complete journey?
If so that’s still a fair bit saved for me, currently costs me £6 for a return to the nearest built up area.
If I could gety family into town on the bus for £10 I would do it without even thinking. No worrying about parking, no stress of driving. Limited to what we can buy as have to carry it. Absolutely a winner.
Yeah now do the same with the trains, paying 200+ for a daily fare at peak hours is a disgrace
Great, now can we do something similar for train fares?
First Bus: Can’t cap the price if they don’t turn up
Perfect.
Once you managed to actually send the *one theoretical bus an hour our village has been reduced to reliably,* maybe this will get some traction.
Time to pat each other on the back for another London-centric great idea though! Sure it’ll work perfectly there…where they already have a viable public transport infrastructure.
They did this in Manchester and it’s been a life saver for me and others.
I would rather eat gravel than use our bus service. Crowded, smelly and filled with some horrid characters.
Comfy, expensive, car journey any day.
I’ll still be driving. The buses are far too unreliable here. Sod standing in the cold and wet for ages to be packed into a humid sweatbox because of no shows.
In June when I was in Germany train fare was capped at 9 euros a month
In Lincoln at least the roads are pretty busy, but they are so much LESS busy when the kids arent being ferried to school in mummies 4×4
​
Should have buses for all schools, and incentivise kids to travel by means other than cars
Less cars means less traffic, which in turn makes the buses more reliable
Bus prices in Coventry haven’t changed in the last 5 yrs. And that’s despite the fact they are committed to having an all electric fleet within 2 yrs time. National Express cover local journeys, but we do have Stagecoach (who charge more and won’t accept a National Express ticket, nor you can use theirs on the NE fleet.)
You can get a single ticket for £2.10. Or get a Daysaver for £4, which you can use at any time during that day, on as many buses as you want. You could technically get to Birmingham on that ticket (as far as I recall, this may have changed in recent times), but you can certainly go to the NEC & back to Coventry for a mere £4.
The bus services in High Wycombe had a similar idea where you could go anywhere in the Bucks region for a fiver (that was back in the 90’s, mind you!), because I used to go to Reading on the bus and go shopping there, then come back. It was a nice day out for a Saturday, a 45 mile round trip for £5 was an absolute bargain. Hate to think what that’d be on the train.
Why if when I have a car would I get on a filthy bus? Why walk to a bus stop when I could walk to my drive turn on heated seats, come back in a few minutes and be in a nice warm cozy environment all to my self? Busses are good for teenagers before they can drive but that’s all.
If I could get from my house to the city centre for 2 quid I would actually consider a bus in times where speed isn’t a factor.
It would currently cost me double the amount of a train to get there, and the same again to get back. So I would be best served spending a fiver on a day ticket.
But for that price I may as well spend £6.90 (or less depending on time of day) on a return train ticket that gets me to the city centre in ten minutes versus 45 minutes.
Or driving there in my car and paying a fiver for parking.
With current bus prices, in my situation at least, there’s just no benefit to buses.
Yeah it takes me £22.50 a week to get to work so that’d be great
When I lived in Malta it was 50c any we’re on that line and everyone used it . Good idea 👍
Maybe trips to my local city might be possible again. I haven’t been in what feels like years.
If they really wanted to take cars off the road they could do this with train fares, but that would mean investing in trains and carriages and investing in rail workers. This bus fare policy is good and will help people in these difficult times, but the government could and should do more, they just have no will to.
The price cap is welcome but alone it’s not enough. It also needs to be reliable and have useful routes at times of day that’s usable. Where I live they have two operators which work different sides of the city. If I want to go from my house to work it takes buying two different tickets, and a change in the middle. It’s 4.5 miles and with all the waiting you’re talking about 45 mins for a journey that would take me 7mins in the car. Not to mention when I finish at 11pm it’s not even running that way. I used to cycle but it’s so busy, I’ve been almost knocked off too many times, the cycle routes are very sketchy.
Right now the bus isn’t even worth it. In this city if there’s more then one of you, a taxi is literally cheaper.
I only learned to drive 4 years ago and I’m 38. I tried to do all cycling and public transport but frankly it’s almost impossible to get places at a reasonable time and price. The final straw was when southern rail basically just stopped running trains back to the folks and I could no longer get back to help my elderly mother and father.
Public transports a joke in the UK and the price is only part of the problem.
47 comments
This is so good to see. Reducing bus fares around the country has always struck me as a bit of a no-brainer. It’s such a cheap thing for the government to do compared to other similar interventions. Improving busses in general, on cost, quality and regularity, is real low hanging fruit for improving people’s lives.
Sometimes I think governments don’t do it because it’s not interesting enough. But sometimes the boring, practical policies are the best.
This shows what can happen in areas where politicians believe that public transport should be a service for the public, not a profit driven business.
Mine have gone up, now £3:40 for a 10 minute trip.
The problem with bus prices is you are trying to compete with the value of my convenience.
Taking my car benefits me by:
-Comfort
-Door to door(ish)
-No waiting
-Not dealing with other people
-No lugging shopping on and off
-Heating/Aircon how I want
-Arrive and leave at my leisure
Bus operators need to work out how much that is worth to me, undercut it and £5 per fare isn’t it, even with fuel and parking the car taken into consideration.
The problem is magnified even moreso if the whole family want to go shopping, which we always do. There is no way that a £20 return fair is worth the sacrifice of convenience.
Great, except one of the largest operators, First, hasn’t signed up. Why wasn’t this mandatory?
Wish they’d do something similar for trains. I regularly drive for (regional) trips I’d rather take a train for because it’s so much more expensive to take the train. Unlikely with privatised services.
This is another edition of the much loved government tactic of “cut funding by £20m, then after the inevitable outcry, increase funding by £2m and brag about it”.
[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/04/quarter-of-bus-routes-axed-in-england-in-last-decade](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/04/quarter-of-bus-routes-axed-in-england-in-last-decade)
Unless you live in Leeds, where buses are apocalyptically shite. Fuck First bus, useless twats.
I would love this. A return ticket to the next town over is almost £5 and I live in a somewhat busy area (this is to say, I’m not 30 miles from the next village or something silly).
About time! I live in Nuneaton it costs £8.70 for a return journey of 4 miles within the borough because stagecoach have a monopoly. Travel to Coventry and it’s unlimited all day for £4 as they have competing companies.
Manchester already implemented this on a permanent basis and are looking to [implement caps on weekly fares](https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/weekly-bus-fares-capped-21-25718386)
It should be noted that as a side-effect, many fares that were previously less than £2 went up to £2.
I live in one of the areas which already does this, but I work just outside it. I can get a bus across the county for £2 one way which can take hours depending on the route, but a few times a week I have to pay over £6 for a day ticket for a 25 minute journey to work and back. I don’t go in often enough that a week ticket is cheaper.
Bizarrely there’s a bus from a couple of towns over which goes to the same destination and has the £2 fare.
I’m finally going to learn to drive after Christmas. I’ve avoided it so far because work was always easy to get to on the bus, but they’re cold, filthy, I can’t remember the last time one showed up on time, the drivers are grumpy, and the customer service is atrocious.
I always thought I was doing something good by taking the bus but it’s fucking awful.
Recently lost My car and have used the bus service. Genuinely surprised at a £7 return ticket for a 9 mile journey. It is far cheaper and more convenient to drive.
This is great, if they can actually run a reliable service. I’ve lived in places where they will happily miss 3 buses off the timetable in a row – it doesn’t matter how cheap it is, it isn’t suitable if you’re trying to get to work on time!
get rid of the non dom and give free bus travel for all.
Reminds me of the good old days when Thatcher banned “The People’s Republic of South Yorkshire” aka Sheffield from having low bus fares.
Capping the fare doesn’t make them reliable or run at useful times. I’d love to get the bus but the last one is at 5.05pm. I finish work at 5pm. The bus into work is at 8.40pm, and gets me into work 30 minutes late. Whereas I can drive and complete the journey in 15 minutes flat.
All that will happen is that these privately run franchises will cut even more “unprofitable” routes to make up any shortfall they don’t get from the government, so the only buses that will run in the future will be in the middle of the day to the shops.
Ours is already crap. I haven’t used a bus since I move out of London in 2002 because the service is so limited and appalling. 10 buses a day to the shops in the next town and nothing to any of the industrial/manufacturing estates where people work.
Is this really going to happen? Sounds too good to be true…
In major cities? Yes this may save car journeys. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff, Edinburgh.
In the rest of the country? Probably won’t make a difference.
I don’t use the bus to get to work *because there are no bus routes that go anywhere near my work*. Or trains, for that matter.
I have to drive to work because it’s the only option. It’s not about cost. A bus could be free but if it doesn’t go anywhere near where I need to go then I simply can’t use it.
And that’s something people ignore.
The bus fair for me is far to expensive. £10 return to town. It’s got crazy.
Brilliant… now all I need is a bus!
I wonder if they can they bring in the cap to school buses too, I pay way more than that for my kids school buses
Wouldn’t mind that happening where I live…
£2.30 to go roughly a mile…2 stops.
I’d love to use the bus more but it’d turn my 25 minute commute into at least 1h49m or, at worst, 2h22m.
Maybe if bus routes weren’t based solely on profit margins, car usage could really be reduced.
Genius, now maybe think abut running a bus service to our village – that has diddly squat – and I’ll think about using it
It’s great but ultimately how is it going to save car journeys? Pretty sure for the majority of people the buses are often late and are unreliable, I know round my neck of the woods they are, so it’s not going to provide much of an incentive.
They won’t save anything in the end if they keep not showing up/not stopping. I use the bus once a week to go into work and 40% of the time there is an issue with 20% of the time the bus just not showing up even if the screen in the station says it is coming.
When they say single fare I’m assuming they mean a one way ticket, so £4 for a complete journey?
If so that’s still a fair bit saved for me, currently costs me £6 for a return to the nearest built up area.
If I could gety family into town on the bus for £10 I would do it without even thinking. No worrying about parking, no stress of driving. Limited to what we can buy as have to carry it. Absolutely a winner.
Yeah now do the same with the trains, paying 200+ for a daily fare at peak hours is a disgrace
Great, now can we do something similar for train fares?
First Bus: Can’t cap the price if they don’t turn up
Perfect.
Once you managed to actually send the *one theoretical bus an hour our village has been reduced to reliably,* maybe this will get some traction.
Time to pat each other on the back for another London-centric great idea though! Sure it’ll work perfectly there…where they already have a viable public transport infrastructure.
They did this in Manchester and it’s been a life saver for me and others.
I would rather eat gravel than use our bus service. Crowded, smelly and filled with some horrid characters.
Comfy, expensive, car journey any day.
I’ll still be driving. The buses are far too unreliable here. Sod standing in the cold and wet for ages to be packed into a humid sweatbox because of no shows.
In June when I was in Germany train fare was capped at 9 euros a month
In Lincoln at least the roads are pretty busy, but they are so much LESS busy when the kids arent being ferried to school in mummies 4×4
​
Should have buses for all schools, and incentivise kids to travel by means other than cars
Less cars means less traffic, which in turn makes the buses more reliable
Bus prices in Coventry haven’t changed in the last 5 yrs. And that’s despite the fact they are committed to having an all electric fleet within 2 yrs time. National Express cover local journeys, but we do have Stagecoach (who charge more and won’t accept a National Express ticket, nor you can use theirs on the NE fleet.)
You can get a single ticket for £2.10. Or get a Daysaver for £4, which you can use at any time during that day, on as many buses as you want. You could technically get to Birmingham on that ticket (as far as I recall, this may have changed in recent times), but you can certainly go to the NEC & back to Coventry for a mere £4.
The bus services in High Wycombe had a similar idea where you could go anywhere in the Bucks region for a fiver (that was back in the 90’s, mind you!), because I used to go to Reading on the bus and go shopping there, then come back. It was a nice day out for a Saturday, a 45 mile round trip for £5 was an absolute bargain. Hate to think what that’d be on the train.
Why if when I have a car would I get on a filthy bus? Why walk to a bus stop when I could walk to my drive turn on heated seats, come back in a few minutes and be in a nice warm cozy environment all to my self? Busses are good for teenagers before they can drive but that’s all.
If I could get from my house to the city centre for 2 quid I would actually consider a bus in times where speed isn’t a factor.
It would currently cost me double the amount of a train to get there, and the same again to get back. So I would be best served spending a fiver on a day ticket.
But for that price I may as well spend £6.90 (or less depending on time of day) on a return train ticket that gets me to the city centre in ten minutes versus 45 minutes.
Or driving there in my car and paying a fiver for parking.
With current bus prices, in my situation at least, there’s just no benefit to buses.
Yeah it takes me £22.50 a week to get to work so that’d be great
When I lived in Malta it was 50c any we’re on that line and everyone used it . Good idea 👍
Maybe trips to my local city might be possible again. I haven’t been in what feels like years.
If they really wanted to take cars off the road they could do this with train fares, but that would mean investing in trains and carriages and investing in rail workers. This bus fare policy is good and will help people in these difficult times, but the government could and should do more, they just have no will to.
The price cap is welcome but alone it’s not enough. It also needs to be reliable and have useful routes at times of day that’s usable. Where I live they have two operators which work different sides of the city. If I want to go from my house to work it takes buying two different tickets, and a change in the middle. It’s 4.5 miles and with all the waiting you’re talking about 45 mins for a journey that would take me 7mins in the car. Not to mention when I finish at 11pm it’s not even running that way. I used to cycle but it’s so busy, I’ve been almost knocked off too many times, the cycle routes are very sketchy.
Right now the bus isn’t even worth it. In this city if there’s more then one of you, a taxi is literally cheaper.
I only learned to drive 4 years ago and I’m 38. I tried to do all cycling and public transport but frankly it’s almost impossible to get places at a reasonable time and price. The final straw was when southern rail basically just stopped running trains back to the folks and I could no longer get back to help my elderly mother and father.
Public transports a joke in the UK and the price is only part of the problem.