to resent well off 60+ people that get free unlimited bus travel

[SuzzieScotland]

I can't afford a car, so I walk, cycle or bus everywhere.

The bus costs almost a pound a mile so it is seen as a treat for me.

A yearly ticket is 1000 or if your a student you can buy a £12 bus I'd card every year and get a yearly ticket that costs 750. This seams far too expensive.

Yet I see many pensioners who run two cars using the bus to get into town or to the airport totally free despite being well off. I think their would be uproar if a 20 pound admin fee a year was applied to these bus passes. In London a year ticket is 3k but anyone over 60 gets unlimited tube and bus despite 100000s of them still in full time work.

Just seams like the young and poor are getting a very raw deal to win grey votes.

iseen you asked who decides the level at which you are no longer eligible for a means tested benefit.

With CB, it's when one adult in the household earns over £44,000 (or thereabouts). But you can still have two or more adults earning just under this, as long as neither of them goes over the £44k. So in theory you can have a couple jointly earning £83,999 and still getting CB, as long as neither goes above the threshold individually.

Sorry, £87,999

I would have thought very very few pensioners have this level of income.

My free travel probably saves me an average of £20 pw. I pay tax, just, and don't get pension credit.

If you took it away from the top tax brackets, you'd save hardly any money. If it were those on pension credit only, there would be a dramatic difference to a lot of pensioners' lifestyles. Incredibly complicated to have a sliding scale. Pensioners' incomes go up and down according to interest rates on their nest-eggs. (Tho' perhaps OP thinks we shouldn't have savings. I've certainly stopped counting on the interest from mine as income.)

And how much you'd lose would depend on how often you used the free travel. So some people with the same income would lose a penny-pinching chunk of their pension, and others nothing at all.

All I can say is just remember the debates in parliament on taking away childbenefit 'from the rich'. And then we discovered that 'the rich' meant the couple with 3 kids, a mother who wasn't working because of the cost childcare, and a dad who earned just over £44 grand.

That's why I think the bus pass shouldn't be removed, thymeout.

I'm very keen on the idea of a flat rate, but, as you say, it wouldn't benefit you personally because you'd have to pay for two buses and a train. Just wanted to add, though, that a journey involving two buses and a train round here would be likely to take you half a day! Most of our routes run every hour and stop at 8pm. We're not even rural, just overrun with cars

Maybe what the OP is trying to say is that as everyone over 60 gets a free bus pass, but not everyone needs one, what could we do instead that would make the system fairer and more affordable for low-income families?

Personally, I mind more that the cost of the fares here is so extortionate that families on low incomes simply can't afford to use public transport for regular journeys. I can see how it could be annoying to know that some pensioners travel for free, even those who could afford to pay £1 a journey.

I don't think the same actual levels would be used for bus passes as for CB, grennie

Suburban - 2 buses and a train gets me and my gc to the St James' Park sandpit in 40 mins flat! 13 miles.

I do agree about families with children. Think that's why Ken introduced free travel for under 16's. Makes a lot of difference to family budgets, especially when housing costs are so much higher in London.

There was a lot of muttering at the time. Teenagers and OAP's are not the most compatible of fellow-travellers. But OAP's are often gp's as well, and I think it's now appreciated how fortunate we are. It's setting one group against another that's so socially destructive.

Imo, it would pay dividends for the govt to roll it out nationally, as they did to extend free travel for the elderly from London to the rest of the country, when the county councils were dragging their feet.

it should all be means tested - with a high cap.

it is totally ridiculous that there are pensioners on incomes of over £100,000 getting all these benefits ..

All these people saying to just walk have very little understanding of the problem.

To claim JSA you have to look for work up to 25+ miles away. Therefore you have no option but to use the bus in many cases unless people think working full time and doing two marathons each day is possible.

Statistics do show that the baby boomers are taking out more from the system than they ever paid in. This leaves the next two generations paying for it and having a much lower standard of living and working for much longer. Its insulting and ignorant the people here saying that younger people don't know the meaning of a proper days work.

Suburban - 2 buses and a train gets me and my gc to the St James' Park sandpit in 40 mins flat! 13 miles.

It's insulting to a generation to imply they didn't work as hard as the current generation when (as someone said earlier) that just isn't true.

Do you have a link that shows what baby boomers are taking?

www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/15/babyboomers-welfare-politics-tax

The current generation are working more as the retirement age has gone up.

But not as long hours or for 6 days a week which was normal in the 50s and 60s.

And the retirement age has gone up for boomers as well - it did for me.

Anything that results in fewer cars on the road is OK with me, even if the bus pass holders could afford the fare. I think it is easier just to have it universal rather than means-tested, although I agree that buses are expensive especially for those who can least afford them.
Maybe if young people weren't so apathetic about voting they'd get a better deal - older people tend to vote in larger numbers.

If only it were that simple, halfdrunktea. In some places, such as where I live, the Tories have such a massive majority on the local council there's just no point voting for anyone else

halfdrunktea young people are in a minority group,its really not as simple as just voting to get a fairer deal.

Debs75

Thanks, I did do that last time (motorbility did not seem too happy) but last month I was involved in a 'prang' and my car has been written off.

But thank you again for thinking about me.

To claim JSA you have to look for work up to 25+ miles away. Therefore you have no option but to use the bus in many cases unless people think working full time and doing two marathons each day is possible.

And if you are on JSA you can claim interview expenses, something I can't because I'm disabled.

So if we both go for the same job in the same location and set off from the same spot how do you need busfare and me not?

You can't really sash,that scheme ended years ago. Jcp advisors can make discresionry contributions to travel, but they very very very rarely do with budget constraints. Outside of london there are no cheaper bus tickets for JSA people.

I couldn't get by without my bus pass, though it is limited to certain hours in the day, I've used it to travel great distances and made huge savings on train and bus tickets. It allows me to see my children.

I'd never even considered pensioners not having a pass, there are so many who use the buses, I imagine they'd be quite isolated without them.

fan no-one is saying pensioners shouldn't use public transport or wouldn't, like many other groups of people in society, benefit from having cheaper or even free transport.

The question being asked is whether it's a good use of funding to give free bus passes to everyone over 60, regardless of whether they can afford to pay their own fares or not.

The question is being asked because there are other groups in society, namely low-income families, who would also benefit from reduced rate or free travel.

YANBU. Tip of the iceberg.

You are NOT entitled to a free bus pass when you turn 60. This was the case when the scheme was first introduced, but it's changed over the last few years. The age of eligibility is now linked to the age at which you are eligible to draw your state pension. It is currently 64 and is set to rise each year.

"If you were born before 6 April 1950, you're eligible for an older person's bus pass from your 60th birthday. [i.e. you will already be 64.]

"If you were born after 5 April 1950, the age you become eligible for a bus pass is linked to changes in the State Pension age for women. This affects both men and women."

see here, for example

(Disclaimer: I don't know if the rules are different in London.)

Also, where does the figure of £1.1bn cost come from? If it's from the Intergenerational Foundation document that someone linked to earlier, then that's the document that says "It is not possible to identify the exact make-up of the principal elements of the costs of schemes for older people, disabled people and concessions for young people so certain estimates need to be made." In other words, they've taken London as the base, lumped together the cost of passes for older people, disabled people and young people and then tried to extrapolate how much of that relates to older people alone.

Forgive me if I don't have confidence in their extrapolation, as this is the same outfit that implies that all over-60s are entitled to free bus passes (they're not, as I've just said) and free TV licences (they're not; you have to be 75+ to qualify for that).

My parents are 63 and they both have their bus passes and have since they turned 60. They were born in September 1950 and January 1951. All of their friends have had them too.

My sis has to wait until she is 63 and her OH until he is 65