East Anglian town. Heard a local bus driver talking. After an 9 hour shift he had taken only £45 - but had carried over 500 people. No idea how much bus companies get paid for those of us over 60 with freeby passes but I bet it's not much.
Maybe the law of unintended consequences will come into play - giving everyone free bus passes results in no buses?
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Good point. Round here (Hertfordshire town), the buses are full of prosperous over 60's nipping out for some retail therapy, bingo or pub visits. One old boy who lives opposite me in Council sheltered housing leaves his brand new car at home every afternoon and takes the bus to Wetherspoon's!
The only people who actually seem to pay are young mothers with children - probably least able to afford it (and fares aren't cheap nowadays).
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Just look at the benefits; only one bus holding you up instead of a dozen fossils! ;-)
Edited by Harleyman on 05/07/2009 at 21:20
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That will be quite enough of that Harleyman. Who would you rather have getting in your way, someone like Stirling Moss, or me, or say someone like Rattle (let alone a bus)?
Edited by Lud on 05/07/2009 at 21:23
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I have to have a car for certain journeys that involve taking the other half to various hospitals and out patient appointments, otherwise my bus pass would be used even more.
I'm in the Merseyside Travel area where the passes have been available for some 15 to 20 years and I reckon if I used it all the time I would cover the council tax bill comfortably. The pass covers the use of buses, trains and ferries over a vast area, in fact as far as Chester by train.
The pass means I can go drinking without any worry about driving, nip into town by bus and not have to hunt for a parking space (for which I would pay, whether on or off-road), no danger of parking tickets from Draconian traffic wardens even on shopping concourse areas and a host of other benefits.
Add to that a 10 minute bus service on our route for most of the day, trains that run to schedule more than 90 per cent of time and you will realise it make sense for us old fogies...:-)
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One day, all those complaining will also be eligible for a bus pass! ;>)
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No such thing as a free lunch.
Councils only get what the Govt estimated they would need, despite saying they'd be paid in full, as a result areas with a high number of over 60s have had to slash budgets from other areas to pay for 'free' bus passes.
It also probably goes some way to explain why my three mile return bus journey is £4.40 whilst a train ticket is £2.10.
Edited by daveyjp on 05/07/2009 at 22:39
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60 is too young a threshold for free bus travel. They should make it 70 instead.
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>>Councils only get what the Govt estimated they would need>>
As I pointed out earlier, Merseyside Travel has been overseeing the scheme long, long before Gordon Brown tried to gain a few kudos...:-)
See:
www.merseytravel.gov.uk/information_tickets_older-...p
www.merseytravel.gov.uk/information_tickets_disabi...p
Because my wife is disabled and has a Blue Badge, she is also entitled to free travel through the two Mersey tunnels.
Incidentally, in contrast to some or all areas where free travel has only been introduced in the last two or three years, no record is made of the number of passengers who use a free bus pass.
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One day all those complaining will also be eligible for a bus pass! ;>)
And they'll be finding out how hard it is to adapt to having a reduced income compared with when they were working.
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Who would you rather have getting in your way someone like Stirling Moss or me or say someone like Rattle
I'd prefer the bus; none of you three would be driving it!
You and Stirling are retired, and Rattle'd never find his way round the route! ;-)
Edited by Harleyman on 06/07/2009 at 00:04
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Can't get hold of a link at the moment, but someone local to me took a free bus ride from Stokenchurch, Bucks to Land's End in a space of 2 days.
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It would have to be planned carefully as you can only use local buses.
When Gordon Brown announced the scheme and it came into effect throughout England, two older ladies from the Scottish Border also got to Land's End just using local buses (33 of them!).
See: tinyurl.com/6d3vbk
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Both hospitals in our town are served by several bus routes but you would not think it when you see the car-parks.The smaller hospital has stops outside the main entrance and about a 50yd. walk from them to the main entrance;the other one has stops on the site.
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It's the same story for many hospitals - a good example is Fazackerley in Liverpool.
However, as many patients and visitors to the hospital come from over a very wide area, using public transport is often time consuming and certainly much more expensive.
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Vague memory that a number of routes in the South West have been cut because the only people using them were pensioners on the free bus pass.
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My daughter was in hospital last week, it would have been two buses to get there and we had to be there for 7.30am, being day surgery we didn't know when she would be operated on so didn't know how long we would be.
My wife was shocked that the car parking charge was £10 until she worked out the bus fares would have been £18.
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Heard a local bus driver talking. After an 9 hour shift he had taken only £45 - but had carried over 500 people
Depends what he means by "taken only £45". Fare-paying passengers no longer need to hand over cash on each bus.
Those who didn't pay will obviously include those with free travel passes, but I presume it also includes those with pre-paid passes. Most areas have some sort of equivalent of the London travelcard, and in my area we have two -- a Metrocard which covers all public transport in West Yorkshire, and a FirstCard which works on the local buses. The latter is a form is Smartcard, like a primitive Oystercard, which gets topped with cash and be used to pay for either a pass or as electronic cash to buy tickets.
So even if nobody with a free bus pass appeared, a bus round my way may take no cash at all, despite having lots of fare-paying passengers.
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Looking at the state of bus services in Sheffield such figures wouldn't surprise me, dirty buses, some rude drivers, scruffy rude foul mouthed passengers and expensive fares. Or for a fraction of that I can travel in air conditioned luxury.
Once upon a time we had one of the best bus services in the UK but it's long gone now along with the subsidized fares....
Steve.
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Once upon a time we had one of the best bus services in the UK but it's long gone now along with the subsidized fares....
Not everywhere. I was brought up in a small Nottinghamshire village; despite being on a main road the last bus to Nottingham was 17.30, no bus back till the following day and the journey took over an hour in an old Leyland Atlantean double-decker, going round every back lane imaginable and seemingly trying to avoid the main road at all costs.
After deregulation we ended up with a smart, fast and direct service with at least a bus every hour, a late-night service and reasonable fares. This is still in place 20 years later.
It's all very well bemoaning the lack of buses but to go back to your points, if the passengers act like pigs then they fully deserve to be treated as such.
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I think you must have misread that. There's no subsidized services in Sheffield any more.
I never acted like a pig and yet at times was treated as such. Whereas I tend to think everyone is individual and should be treated as such - do not think that because 90% of your customers are rude they all are. I've worked in the retail/service industry nearly all my life so I know how bad/nice people can be.
Steve.
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Maybe the law of unintended consequences will come into play - giving everyone free bus passes results in no buses?
Giving everyone "free" pus passes could be on the cards, as a measure to cut CO2 emissions. The passes are paid for of course, by the taxpayer.
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