Everyone in the UK that is 60+ should get free local train and bus travel at any time

[magapiemag]

Why is it just people in London that get this? Everyone 60+ should get this to make it a fair system. Plenty are 60+ and not retired so still work and free bus and train travel would be a very welcomed. Is this more of London creaming the goodies for its self and letting the rest of the country with a inferior service?

You have to travel on local buses - which tend to take ages and literally go round the houses. So it would take a couple of days at least to get from Brighton to Scotland

Let's never let the facts get in the way of a ridiculous MN story...

Re Merseyside- yes, I'm sure they can only use it on the Merseytravel network.
Public transport across Merseyside is very good and well used. Esp the local Merseyrail trains.

Don't know the ins and outs, only that they both recently turned 60, and trotted down to the Merseytravel centre with photo ID to proudly collect their passes!

Merseytravel

Sorry, 60 is too young these days in my view. 70, yes (maybe). Why should my perfectly healthy, very rich CEO be entitled to a free bus pass? Give the passes to those looking for work.

Yes, 60, for those still eligible at 60, is too young. Why should rich CEO's get free bus passes and not those looking for work? Well, could you see the likes of the present Government giving anything away to a jobseeker? No Tory votes in it, but (they hope) still plenty of pensioner votes for the Tories.

Peregrina

I fully support the idea of free travel for job seekers - my guess is it's a question of how it would be administered & the costs of that. In London you could probably do it using Oysters & as soon as someone came off JSA they'd be cancelled. But I'd think the costs of keeping on top of even a simple(?) system like that would be huge.

I never understand where retired people have to be at 9 in the morning? Every single day there are people trying to use their passes at 8:45 & the driver has to tell them to fuck off wait until 9 to use their pass.

Nathan when my Mother retired she volunteered for a charity and an old people's day centre, both required her there for pretty much regular start of working hours. Several friends had newly retired parents helping with child care and traveling to their homes for that purpose, also in time for working hours.

My Mother wasn't using public transport but I can see why active new retired would need to be traveling at that time rather than simply choosing to.

FFS most people do not get a free bus pass until state retirement age. That is currently 66 and will soon rise to 67. Those in London, Merseyside and Scotland get it at 60. Everyone else has to wait.
And in most places, it is for off peak buses only. These are when the buses are far less busy anyway.

And I would support job seekers getting free bus passes. When I was unemployed I couldn't afford the bus and walked everywhere. But I was young so was perfectly capable of walking 4 miles to the job centre and back.

London pays for it itself . It doesn't take it from anywhere else.

I don't think anyone who qualifies to pay tax as a pensioner should get it, or the fuel allowance.

I never understand where retired people have to be at 9 in the morning?
I think some older people get out of synch, and end up going to bed early in the evening, and hence are wide awake at 5 am. FIL was like that. Before bus passes came in you would see them congregating outside the local post office at 8:30 on pension day.

London, Merseyside, Scotland, Wales and NI all give free travel unrestricted times to 60+ (or at least did very recently). Merseyside I only found out about via this thread.

There may be other areas doing this but those regions alone tot up to > 20m people on the last population figures I found. So between 35-40% population.

I think an interesting question is why most of England outside London does not seem to do this. It isn't just 'rich London' - some of the English shires are a lot richer on average than say Wales or NI or Merseyside or even Scotland. Its a regional political choice in those cases making free travel an effective postcode lottery.

sorry more like 30-35% - i had the wrong UK figures. Still a lot more than a small local elite.

"Postcode lottery" or democratic local decision?

Nathan Why do you stereotype older people like that?

I'm not stereotyping. Just saying what I see every day. The whole point of bus passes not being valid until 9:30 is to stop transport being clogged up by people that don't have to be anywhere for a certain time.

One free bus pass thing that annoys me is school children on London busses.

Not the ones that need to get it. The ones that get on and go about 500 yards, filling the bus up so that others can't get on !

Nathan how on earth do you know they have no need to be somewhere at that time? Most of the voluntary sector around here is heavily dependent on the work of unpaid newly retired.

And 'clogged up'? These are people.

Andrew that was kind of my point. The original question was about London creaming off the best deal when in reality its determined at regional level. You can have local postcode lotteries /accountability or central dictatorship/strategic planning but you can't have both it seems.

The problem I'd expect is poorer parts of wealthy shires don't get benefits and services that you might expect. London is wealthy overall but has some staggeringly poor areas however across the region tends to support public spending on eg education, health and transport where the option is available. Much like Scotland in in that respect.

And some of those early travellers are off to provide unpaid childcare without which many people could not hold down a job.

i live in halifax and you have to be 65 to get a free bus pass they changed this last year when i was 59, so now at 50 i have to work six more years to get a pension and wait five more years to get a free bus pass life aint fair

should say now at 60 not 50

Transport in London is controlled by the Mayor's office I believe. It's one of the benefits of having one.