Free for All

Omnibuses2.0’s Far Northern Correspondent returns from a day down south (or so he calls it) with an intriguing perspective on future bus developments…

We’ve almost finished England’s first year of national free travel for elderly and disabled people. We could say that locally it’s almost hit maturity. So why don’t we extend it to everyone else as well?

At home in Cumbria we don’t have very many buses. What we do have are either subsidised two fold, by the County Council and again on fairly well loaded contracts by the districts owing to free. Or they’re operated commercially by Stagecoach with some stingingly high fares to make the most of the tourist pound.

Extending free travel to the remainder of the community wouldn’t present massive obstacles outside of some of the larger urban areas. Rush hour loadings aren’t likely to fill buses, especially as travel is less markedly peaked here and would present a massive opportunity to reduce tourist traffic jams within the Lake District National Park radically.

My train south took me to my soon to be adopted university home of Oxford, where free travel would be an altogether more interesting proposition.

Despite the well-known challenges of parking in the city centre, peak time congestion is rife and extensive and traffic is even bad during the daytime within the park and ride ring. Though I am at something of a loss, they must park and work in the inner suburbs, the city centre being less densely officed than most comparable centres (with the University’s extensive land take). Free travel for everyone, all the time, would increase the attractiveness of park and ride, remembering buses are pretty terminal outside of the city council area. It could improve the viability of more peripheral routes, some of which operate only hourly even within a mile of the city centre. Fares (also fairly stinging e.g. Woodstock return, eight miles each way, is £5 compared with my 14 mile home to big station return for £2.85) on Stagecoach’s country routes would probably reduce with subsidy from the city boundary. Otherwise it would be an open door to knock off independents.

But what about the volume? Despite everything, some peak time city buses, especially Stagecoach’s, aren’t entirely full so there is still space for new traffic. And if it works, of course, the quieter roads would mean higher frequencies for the same buses with the faster throughput, as well as faster boarding with no tickets to check or passes to issue.

There is a precedent. In London bus use is high (again with surprising car traffic) and everyone is subsidised to a 90p flat fare and £3 day ticket (on Oyster). This is similar to most large European cities. On trains, the taxpayer subsidises most local routes (in Leeds an inner-suburban adult can probably save a third by switching from bus to train) and on inter-city routes long distance business travel subsidises youthful jaunts on railcard advance tickets.

OK, things would be difficult especially as there would be no standard adult fare on which to calculate reimbursement. But like everything else, if you try hard enough, it won’t be insurmountable. And it’s difficult to predict the direction of travel of the demand curve—but that doesn’t prevent an experiment.

So who wants to sponsor the private member’s bill?

And can we dissuade the county from banning buses before we make them busier?