To think free bus passes should be reformed

[Ll81]

Where I am the bus is so expensive it' usually has very few paying customers. services are being cut as the funding for the free bus pass has been cut and this was one given reason for raising fares and cutting services. Further compounding the problems.

To get to sign on from here is £16 and two busses. No help for anyone on low incomes or JSA.

In London tfl has over a billion pound debt, but still give out the freedom pass.

I've no problem with people that can't afford to run a car getting help with massively subsidised transport costs. For pensioners the calculation is already done for state pension so next to no means testing cost. Then people that need help could pay 95% less for the cost and people with money pay full cost. People often don't value "free" stuff.

The current system is killing off busses, espically in rural and semi rural areas.

On the otherhand some wealthier car owning pensioners catch the rural bus to connect with better services and take advantage of free day tripping. But if they didn't, the bus company would get a subsidy for them, and the rural service would be even more crap.

Ageism - the last allowable ism :(

Because it is a London borough she has a freedom pass: a 6 zone London travel card which costs £2500 a year. She has had it since retirement and doesn't use it.

NewYearNiki the freedom pass doesn't cost them money. TFL don't have to pay anyone £2,500 to give the card to your mum.

care only works if there is good transport. No car here means you're fucked and for many would mean unemployment. Realistically it will never be viable to run services here every 15 minutes that go more or less straight to towns or even the big industrial estates or retail parks. Anyone who looses a job will keep a banger on the road long after they've cut back or sold everything else. Cos if you don't you have little chance of finding another job.

Increasing the cost might be beneficial for Londoners or others in large towns and cities, but it would be detrimental outside that, rural and coastal areas already get the shit end of the stick in every other area without car use needed to be added.

mere it's a not always hourly bus, couldn't get much crappier. Any gain to the bus service comes from connecting routes. And perhaps if there wasn't an easy profit from day trippers they'd be keener to investigate the market for services that could get people to work on time. At the moment it's either a very early bus, before most childcare opens, or one that always get stuck in traffic and arrives in town after 9. Or you walk 1&1/2 miles and catch a more regular service which isn't suitable for everyone.

I'd rather see extra paid on behalf of the poorer pensioners and disabled in poverty so they can access other transport.

I understood that the cost of the 'free' bus journeys was paid to the bus operators by the local council - is this not the case? If it is true I have often thought that touristy areas such as York, Edinburgh etc must pay a fortune as you get loads of non-residents coming to the area and then using their bus passes to do all the sightseeing stuff.

I agree re secondary children; if their school is a certain distance away they can have one that works mon-fri, 7.30-5.00. Loads of kids get on for a couple of stops clogging up the buses.

My mother has a free pass for the past 6 years. My father will be due his this year. My mother has never ONCE used hers. They have two cars and don't need them. It's a complete waste. They never bother going anywhere anyway bar Tesco once a week.

No way! We already have a big problem with dangerous elderly people on the roads who don't want to accept that they're no longer fit to drive. Take away free buses or make them means tested and you'll just give more people a reason to keep driving when they really shouldn't any more.

Yes, there are problems with bus service provision that need sorting out. But I disagree with changing free bus passes as the solution. The lives that it potentially saves are well worth the cost, as far as I'm concerned.

Hilda, if they don't use them, then they don't cost anything except the material they're printed on.

What alot of grumbling.

Free bus travel for pensioners and school kids in London has loads of benefits. It can be mildly annoying when there is a class on a school trip or no seats the bus is full of pensioners going shopping when you privately think 'couldn't they go later in the day?' But that's far out weighed by the roads being less busy, instilling a habit of using public transport in the young and keeping elderly nervous drivers off the road.

If you regularly can't get on the bus you want it's worth feeding that back to TFL. There have been service alterations around here to accommodate routes being busier as new schools opened.

If London could improve cycling routes so more kids could cycle to school rather than catch buses short distances that would be even better.

I agree with the OP. Most services that have been introduced in recent years that are free to the user seem to have been underfunded- free school meals for under 7s, extended free nursery hours, to give examples.

I would make a charge for those of pensionable age, say once a year, and for children a modest fare for those not on free school meals.

you can't use a Freedom Pass on a London bus before 09:30.

You can, and the Tube, and most Overground routes.

And it keeps a lot of people off the road who ought not to be driving, and there is not the political will to make 65+ or 70+ submit to regular health checks when they renew their driving licences!

2015 parliantary briefing paper on this issue
researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01499/SN01499.pdf

It provides the facts like how the schemes are paid for.

‘People with money’ - do you mean people who work?

There was a time when women got their freedom passes at 60 and men at 65. But it was changed to 60 for everyone. Something to do with the EU? Time limits disappeared when Boris was mayor. The original scheme was introduced by Ken Livingstone under the GLC. Bromley council didn't want to join in and lost a court case over it.

What worries me about means-testing is they will take the easiest route and give passes only to those on Pension Credit. There are lots of pensioners on low incomes who don't qualify for PC because they have savings over the threshold. I don't know any of these wealthy people who live in £1 million houses, holiday on cruise ships and spend their heating allowance on crates of expensive wine. There are lots of women whose 'gold-plated' pensions amount to v little.

If I didn't have a pass, it would cost me £12 for a day pass from my local station. For 5 years, I travelled from zone 6 to zone 6, S.E. to N.W. once or twice a week to care for my elderly mother to keep her in her own home. I couldn't have done that without my freedom pass. People use them for all sorts of things that benefit others - volunteering, child-care. It's a cheap way of keeping the elderly active and independent and museums, galleries, shops and cafes in Central London would certainly lose out. More pensioners on the roads wouldn't help congestion or pollution, either.

Much better to subsidise public transport for everyone, more use, better services, than take free travel away from those who qualify for it now.

Already get almost run over too much by doddery old people who won't admit they can't see past the end of their nose. Would happen more if they didn't have bus passes.

I once was on a bus so crowded that people were sitting on the stairs and this one woman wouldn't move her bag and let someone sit on the inside seat on the basis that she had a bus pass which allowed a plus one. Was nobody with her but she would not budge.

TfL don't pay anything for Freedom passes.

They're issued by borough councils and paid for by Londoners' council tax (same as how all councils fund pensioners and disabled passes)

No Thymeout the Bromley case was about a big cut in fares leading to a big rise in rates, not about Freedom Passes.

It was nothing to do with the EU when the age was equalised. That was because a Council (outside London) gave free entry to the swimming pool if you were of pensionable age and a man over 60 but not 65 complained that the effect was sex discriminatory; and the EOC supported him and won. Quite right too.

I think it's different for bus stops near secondaries because the schools can have three or more times the number of pupils, and the radius over which they are admitted is rather larger than the norm for many London primaries (because there are fewer of them and they are more spaced out).

In the rural area where I live we have four buses a WEEK (to three different places) They all leave the village around 10am and come back at about 1pm, so there is no chance of using them for employment. A taxi journey to the nearest (small) town costs £15, as the taxi companies charge a "both ways" price, as there's little chance of getting a fare back to base, I suppose. The bus companies won't run public "peak time" services as they re all out doing heir school bus contracts.

Therefore car owning is a necessity, and a free bus pass is pretty useless apart from an occasional quick shopping trip.

And a "Make all bus services free and charge a huge amount for cars" scheme (as suggested upthread) would a chocolate teapot scheme here!

What worries me about means-testing is they will take the easiest route and give passes only to those on Pension Credit. There are lots of pensioners on low incomes who don't qualify for PC because they have savings over the threshold. But didn't they get rid of pension credit when they upped the pension to £155? So a steadily increasing proportion of pensioners couldn't be means tested via pension credit.

Op are you complaining about the price of buses or just bashing the tfl system? If its the former i totally understand as ive been at the mercy of rural buses.
If its the later and you live rurally i dont see how pensioners and school children getting free travel in the city affects you, tfl buses have a flat fare which is capped foe everyone.
I wouldnt allow my 11yr old to cycle where i am anyway so his zip card is his freedom..

I don't think they need to means test them, but it should be restricted to local buses only.

newyear you clearly know the wrong people. My DF is a widower, lives in an outer London borough, is 80+ and he and and his friends are more than happy to travel to central London alone.

I've said for years that the best way to be fair to more people, is for all OAPs to have to pay a token amount each time they get on a bus....... 30p or something. Not enough to mean it will stop anyone going anywhere they need to, but it would raise thousands of ££ if the bus companies got 30p, for every pensioner, for every trip.

Might mean that non-earning 16 and 17 yr olds could be given half price travel then, rather than the full price they have to pay (here) at the moment.