London parents, did you know about public transport changes?

[SilverDragonfly1]

If so, apologies for bringing it up again but I haven't noticed it being discussed here.

One of the bailout conditions for TfL is to stop allowing children free travel on buses, meaning you may need to add bus fares into your budget next term. This is temporary, but I can't find any indication of how temporary. I have to admit, free travel was what allowed us to keep above water as a family when my son went to secondary- if it hadn't been there, his first choice school would have really impacted our budget.

If anyone has better info about the decision than me (not hard really), please share.

Children in London normally get free bus rides?

Gosh, I didn’t know that.

Well they did!

In the real world we pay £18 a week for our kids to get to school, it's reasonable that Londoners do the same!

I didn’t know this at all.
Is this in force now? How are we meant to know about it? Surely they’d need loaded Oyster cards to get on?
Is it adult fare or cheaper?
TFL are emailing me every bloody day to tell me to avoid getting the bus unless I’m a key worker but they can’t email to tell people this?!

Sorry for being stupid: are the proposed changes for children of all ages or those over a certain age?

London - welcome to the real world

its what the rest of the country has always had
but our bus fare are MUCH HIGHER than yours think £9 return for a 4 mile each way journey
AND
our bus tickets are not transferrable between routes

sorry but I have zero sympathy for Londoners who have been cosseted from this shitty Tory policy for decades

I paid over £1000 a year for my kids to get school

@listeningquietly no one is saying it is fair for you to have to do that. £9 return is a disgraceful fare and I don't think anyone should have to pay to get their kids on a bus to school. The fact this happens up and down the country is shameful.
Just because you have it bad, doesn't mean everyone should. Sorry but this is a horrible mentality to have.

I don't think that it is acceptable for school children to be charged bus fares anywhere in the country for reasons of choice as I have specified above, but this thread is specifically about London. Out of interest and not wanting to derail the thread though I would like to know if other areas are still giving free train,bus etc travel to the over 60s but not to children?

cake
In most of the country buses have been cut to the bone
when a village has three buses a week
or the one daily bus that serves students is cut half way through a term
and buses stop at 6pm even in towns

sympathy for Londoners is likely to be ... NIL

But I would still like to know if the county has prioritised free travel for older citizens above free travel for children. Just nosiness.

cake
Central government gives out money for OAPs
it does not for anybody else.
London buses were never deregulated
its not about priority, its about the whole structure

In my city we have 6 bus companies, none of whom recognise each others' tickets and the fares are all different

Imagine getting on the 54 and your season ticket not working on the 73
welcome to our world

buses stop at 9pm even in towns
the cheap bus ends earlier than the expensive one

Wen Maggie deregulated buses, London was exempt.

@ListeningQuietly for me it’s more the fact that they haven’t actually announced this!
My 16 yr old has been wanting to get a job, if he’d gone out to get the bus to an interview, he wouldn’t have been able to get on because they don’t let you pay with cash and we wouldn’t have sorted him out with an Oyster card because without me reading this thread we wouldn’t have had a clue this was happening!

Apparently the ins and outs of this haven't been finalised, according to one of the local news sites I found on the BBC News site. You can find it by going to the London part of the website and scrolling down. I'll try to post the link:

www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/18485227.cutting-free-travel-kids-cost-london-councils-10m/?ref=rss

Has it been announced at what age children will have to start paying? 5, 11 etc?

@TinnedPearsForPudding, it hasn't been announced because it won't happen until they can make the necessary changes to the IT systems. If you think about it, they're not currently set up to deduct funds when kids swipe in on buses. They'll also need to launch an information awareness campaign.

It's going to be a disaster if lots of kids end up stranded without credit on their cards. It's very fiddly to set up auto-top up on Zip cards because first you have to link them to an adult Oyster account. The instructions for doing it are not at all clear. I remember tearing my hair out over it.

Tinned
If London becomes like the rest of the country - 4
so that free bus fares explicitly exclude school age kids

It's really disappointing that a thread giving London parents the heads up about their children's ZIP cards needing to be topped up so they can get to schoo,l has turned into a race to the bottom.

You're right; outrageous bus fares outside of London are not fair. It's not fair that you have to pay the bus fare for your child to get to their nearest secondary school. My point about the withdrawal of free bus travel for under 18s in London is that it's come at a time of year that means it's too late for parents to take that into account when applying for secondary schools for their Y6 children. It will be lower income families that are disproportionately affected by this and whose children may end up not returning to/starting secondary in September. They're already more likely to be living in over-crowded accommodation, have poorer health etc. and now some of them will be faced with decisions about whether or not there's enough money to get them to their allocated school. Admissions appeals are already running behind so it's unlikely any borough is going to want lots of parents declining the allocated place and restarting the process in the hope their child can be placed at a school that it's safe to walk to i.e. not along a dual carriageway.

Tbh, this just brings London into line with other areas that have to pay.
It will be a significant payment, but not an unreasonable expectation.

Disgraceful! As if the number of working households below the poverty line wasn’t high enough.
As for the London bashing there are some of us who are low- middle income earners struggling to survive on the City we come from. We aren’t all high earners from abroad!
I only have a toddler but there is only 1 secondary school within walking distance and it’s technically in another borough- every secondary in our borough requires two buses! It’s disgusting what the tories have done- fine let it cost me over £200 a month to get to work, congestion and low emission tax me to death meaning I have to get into debt for a new petrol car- but leave the children alone!

SE13
As per threads passim ad nauseam
the difference between London and the rest of the country gets our goat.

When my kids were at 6th form the ONLY bus in and out of 11 villages was cancelled with 5 days notice.
Fares not an issue - the bus stopped.

When a rival company takes over your route, an annual pass becomes worthless

Bus fares for under 11's work out at £5 a day

In cities, kids can walk to an alternative provider
in the Test valley the schools are 11 miles apart ...

London had it right, but now has to face the new normal

ListeningQuietly public transport outside of cities are a disgrace-
I would happily champion reform
But the fact you take glee in children, CHILDREN being disadvantaged is disgusting!

onlyfools
But the fact you take glee in children, CHILDREN being disadvantaged is disgusting!
Que
My children have always faced what Londoners now are
I am glad that preference by postcode is removed
and rightly so

My children have always faced what Londoners now which is awful!
But I don’t get why you can’t champion your cause rather than wish ill on others.

By comparison, not only does it cost me over £200 a month to travel to work but as of October 2021 it will cost me £12.50 to travel down the road to Sainsbury’s - so thanks to the low emission zone extension I have to get into debt to get a new car and get rid of my 2009 hatchback diesel. I’m bitter but it wouldn’t make me feel better if you were penalised the same way.

I think possibly what has riled some people is the posters pleading that London is a special case while not acknowledging or perhaps even understanding the issues that children in rural areas face. It comes across as slightly ignorant and is bound to annoy those who have one or two buses a day and pay £600 a year.

I think that most people might agree that it should be prioritised that all children get free or some form of subsidised travel.

I too know of very wealthy, working people who use their free transport passes and it seems wrong.

But I don’t get why you can’t champion your cause rather than wish ill on others.
We tried but under bus deregulation law it was deemed anticompetitive
see the multiple court cases where sensible local authorities tried to unravel the rules using London as an example
but were told "London is special"
hence the utter lack of sympathy
check out the Brexit vote versus bus supply map