Feel like a mug paying for buses in Wales

[CaptainArcher]

I live in North Wales and the cost of a daily ticket on the bus is now £7.70 a weekly ticket is £28 now…

It seems like every time i board the bus I'm the only mug actually paying, i tap on and off with my bank card. Everyone else is a pensioner using their free bus pass, or people my age (30s) have a white pass card.. Which means they're on the sick

To make matters worse, i visit across the border sometimes to the Wirral and buses are so much more reasonably.. £2 for a single trip

I can drive bus i gave up cars a few years ago to save money and live a more simpler life

The cap is now £3 not £2

Don’t be, it doesn’t exist any more. Back to full fare!

This seems to be a trend; I assume ‘society’ needs a group to pick on and the elderly have been chosen. Do some not realise that private pensions are paid into by the employee and employer and are not a free benefit. Likewise state pension is based on the individual’s contributions. If they own their own home it’s because they’ve worked and paid a mortgage. What a terrible group they are!! The poison aimed at this group by some is very concerning.

So another pop at the elderly thread.
Altho, tbf, you've thrown in those 'on the sick' for balance in your annoyance.
The problem if with those who decide the bus fare.
If you reach old age, or become so sick you are unable to work, presumably you would refuse a free pass on moral grounds?

I don't think I've heard "on the sick" since 1990 !

And I hope you offer to pay for your prescriptions, and don't take any UC or other benefits...

You begrudge the sick/disabled and elderly free bus travel?

What is the pass for 'people on the sick' as you put it.
I live in Wales and not aware of any pass for disabled/ sick people

To be fair, its usually cyclists

I live in West Wales daily ticket
Adults £8.50 kids 4.50
It is bad especially if you have to use the bus a few times a week.
But I don’t have any issues with disabled people or elderly people having passes.

I get fed up of posts flagging off pensioners.
A few points. Everyone will either be a pensioner one day or dead. If the younger generations fight for things like free prescriptions and bus passes to be stopped, then guess what? You won't get them when it is your turn.
Of course most of the wealth is held by older generations. Me and DH worked for 100 years between us before we retired. During that time we paid off our mortgage, paid for our kids to be brought up, paid our taxes and managed to save a little so now we are reasonably well off. We had many times when we faced similar problems as today's younger generations, but I don't think we ever blamed them for our difficulties. We received very little in the way of inheritance, in fact we helped our parents out when we could. I don't get the embittered, envious, entitled attitudes of some younger people. If you don't like paying for buses move closer to work, get a job closer to home or go self employed.

Why have you assumed OP to be a young person? She could be 60 for all you know.

I’m not a millennial and was able to buy a home and save for a pension but I can see why younger people are disillusioned. It’s unlikely that the young people of today will even get a state pension. I will retire at 68 and I don’t hold out much hope for getting it. I think benefits like winter fuel payment, bus passes for pensioners etc will gradually be eroded so that only the boomer generation would have benefitted from them.

Calling young people with fears for the future ‘bitter, envious and entitled’ just proves their point really.

@nomas If OP was 60 she'd have the free Transport for Wales bus pass.

Ok, she could be 50 then!

£2 cap has gone up
now £3

at least op you dont have the expense of a car
and you can read or mumsnet or whatever while you are travelling on the bus

If you want your service to disappear, by all means discourage people from using it - councils usually measure the viability of each route by the number of people using it, not how much they pay.
Collecting extra passengers is a minimal cost to running the service, so if pensioners who would otherwise drive are using it because it's free then that's a good thing for the other service users. It keeps the route busy and therefore viable.

As a South Wales mum I agree, I have a child who started uni last September and the Welsh student finance set up is much fairer than the English system.
As someone on a low income im also very grateful for the free prescriptions, although i don’t really think thats fair either. With the state the NHS is in, why we are ALL able to have free prescriptions in Wales when some of us can very well afford to pay, is beyond me.

Bus companies look at revenue vs costs.

Pensioners using the service does not make the service any more viable or cheaper for the OP.

I feel like that whenever I pay for a prescription. No one else ever seems to pay at my local pharmacy. There was once a trainee on the till - I'd popped in after work about five thirty pm, so I clearly was far from her first customer of the day - and she simply didn't understand the concept of paying for a prescription and kept insisting I had to sign the back of it.

At least you get free prescriptions in Wales, @CaptainArcher 😄

The bus companies get reimbursed for passengers who travel as concessions.
I didn't say concessions make the journey cheaper. Concessions encourage more people to use the route, which makes it less likely that the route gets closed. If the service is withdrawn because not enough people are using it, the question of whether the price is £2, £3 or £7 becomes moot.

The government has withdrawn the funding though, so they’re not getting concessions, hence full price paying customers having to pay the increase.

The same logic also applies in Scotland. The decision to charge for prescriptions is political not economic. Don’t make other nations pay prescription charges - lobby the UK parliament to drop the charges for English prescriptions.

She says she's in her thirties in the OP.

YANBU to whinge about bus fares.

YABVVVVVVU to bring disability into it . You want my disability? Take it, please!