DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Pondering this idea... At present TfL London buses charge a flat fare of £1.50 - and I wouldn't be surprised if that goes up next year given TfL's financial difficulties. £1.50 isn't unreasonable if you're going a fair distance - in fact is arguably too cheap for many longer journeys that you could make, but looks ridiculously expensive and must be a huge disincentive to using the bus if you only want to go a mile or so, and I can't help thinking it would be fairer and potentially do more to get people out of cars if you could go back to having a fare that depended on how far you are going.
Obviously you can only have a variable fare if the system knows where you got on and off - which implies you'd need to have Oyster readers by the exits of buses as well as the entrances, with people expected to touch out as they leave the bus (presumably, on pain of the system assuming they've travelled right up to the end of the route if they don't). The system would also have to be programmed to know where the bus is when you touch in/out.
What do people think? Would the idea be practical in principle, or are there massive technological difficulties I haven't thought of? Having people touch out would obviously make exiting the bus very slightly slower, but I wouldn't have thought the difference would be that significant, other than at stops where you have a large number of people getting off and relatively few boarding, which isn't that high a proportion of stops - and you could potentially minimise this impact by providing Oyster readers at selected bus stops where large numbers of people alight, allowing people at those stops to touch out after leaving the bus. You could also avoid touch-outs for people alighting at stations and planning to continue their journey by train by having the system assume a touch-out from the bus if it detects a touch-in at the station. Plus if lower fares for journeys up to 1-2 miles meant fewer cars on the road, that would speed up the buses anyway.
Obviously you can only have a variable fare if the system knows where you got on and off - which implies you'd need to have Oyster readers by the exits of buses as well as the entrances, with people expected to touch out as they leave the bus (presumably, on pain of the system assuming they've travelled right up to the end of the route if they don't). The system would also have to be programmed to know where the bus is when you touch in/out.
What do people think? Would the idea be practical in principle, or are there massive technological difficulties I haven't thought of? Having people touch out would obviously make exiting the bus very slightly slower, but I wouldn't have thought the difference would be that significant, other than at stops where you have a large number of people getting off and relatively few boarding, which isn't that high a proportion of stops - and you could potentially minimise this impact by providing Oyster readers at selected bus stops where large numbers of people alight, allowing people at those stops to touch out after leaving the bus. You could also avoid touch-outs for people alighting at stations and planning to continue their journey by train by having the system assume a touch-out from the bus if it detects a touch-in at the station. Plus if lower fares for journeys up to 1-2 miles meant fewer cars on the road, that would speed up the buses anyway.