Oh Joy

National free travel is upon us in just three week’s time. Oh joy.

Last week, transport authorities published their reimbursement arrangements, to give operators time to appeal. Checking them adds yet more work to the time already spent both in the run up to national free travel and in sorting out the current financial year issues. All in all, it’s time well spent though, given the importance of free travel to each and every bus business in the land.

The upshot of all this is increases in rumours of withdrawals or fares increases, or both, because of perceived poor settlements.

Idle threats? Possibly but also possibly not, because some routes have already either been pruned or cuts are in the pipeline. At its most simplistic, for those routes carrying large numbers of free passengers, there needs to an increase in free travellers of between 120 and 180 per cent to bring revenue back to the level operators received under the old half-fare schemes.

Add to this the DfT’s moved goal posts, by alerting the formula under which local authorities consider generation. The DfT is probably right in its view that the formula hasn’t taken into account of so-called long-run demand changes. Nevertheless, operators are anxiously checking to see whether their local authorities have adopted the DfT’s guidelines. Expect trimmings if they have.

As the CPT says, ‘There is a very real danger that the most visible effect of the government’s generosity to older and disabled people will be a substantial shrinking of England’s bus network’.

And imagine the time involved in explaining by letter, email and phone to customers who feel it’s absurd that cuts are made not because of decreasing passenger numbers but *increasing* passengers (of free travellers) They'll think it perverse and will be misunderstood.