Will Labour scrap the £2 fare Cap? (now confirmed will rise to £3)

[Halwynd]

Before the £2 cap, the journey I take cost £4.80 return. The £2 fare encouraged me to give the bus a try (Bee Network) and I carried on using it. If the fare reverts to £4.80, or perhaps £5, then fair enough I suppose, but if it jumps to £6 - which for me will be £1 a mile - I'll probably go back to using the car.

 

[johncrossley]

Before the £2 cap, the journey I took cost £4.80 return. The £2 fare encouraged me to give the bus a try (Bee Network) and I carried on using it.

Buses in Greater Manchester are covered by a separate fare cap. This is currently also £2 and will continue at £2 into 2025. From January this will include free changes of bus within one hour.

 

[Halwynd]

Buses in Greater Manchester are covered by a separate fare cap. This is currently also £2 and will continue into 2025. From the spring this will include free changes of bus within one hour.

Forgive me, I wasn't aware - thanks for that.

 

[Statto]

Buses in Greater Manchester are covered by a separate fare cap. This is currently also £2 and will continue at £2 into 2025. From the spring this will include free changes of bus within one hour.

It's the same situation here on Merseyside (or rather Liverpool City Region), bus fares here are covered by a separate fare cap too.

 

[psmith2023]

Are west Yorkshires coverted the same way or will they fall in line with the nationwide scheme

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Just been announced by Kier Starmer in reply to a question that the £2 cap has funding until the end of the year, and in 2025 there will be a £3 cap.

Typical politician's double speak from Starmer. Putting bus fares up from £2 to £3 isn't a cap, it's a fare rise of 50%!

 

[Wolfie]

Single fares with distance-based pricing will not penalise passengers who need to change buses.

If we want to be serious about encouraging people to give up driving, we need to have the SINGLE FARE lower than the marginal cost of driving, such that people will only drive when public transport can't reasonably serve the places they want to go.

In Hong Kong, most bus fares are cheaper than the fuel cost of a car alone (it is comparable to the fuel cost of a motorcycle), combined with the difficulty of parking, public transport achieves more than 80% of the market share there without a strict quota on car ownership (unlike Singapore). Bus fares are regulated by distance, but not strictly priced according to it. Some bus companies couldn't get regulatory approval to sell monthly tickets because it would unnecessarily penalise those passengers who don't travel long haul often, to the extent that they would cross subsidize long distance commuters.

Hong Kong is pretty much nothing but city. Much of the UK remains rural. You persist in comparing apples and oranges.

Worse still you routinely moan mostly with very little logical rationale when the UK is different. This is not, and never will be Hong Kong! Can we learn some lessons from there? Undoubtedly. Should we blindly copy it? Hell no!

 

[Statto]

Typical politician's double speak from Starmer. Putting bus fares up from £2 to £3 isn't a cap, it's a fare rise of 50%!

Would you rather the cap be scrapped then, £1 rise to £3 is better that having the fare cap completely scrapped

 

[Darandio]

Typical politician's double speak from Starmer. Putting bus fares up from £2 to £3 isn't a cap, it's a fare rise of 50%!

So a £3 cap that still keeps many fares lower than they were previously isn't a cap? Alright then.

 

[Whiteway215]

I wonder what the general reaction from the bus operating companies to the £3 cap will be?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Typical politician's double speak from Starmer. Putting bus fares up from £2 to £3 isn't a cap, it's a fare rise of 50%!

It's a cap. Fares won't cost more than £3 instead of not costing more than £2. Some for very short trips might cost less - certainly it won't be a de-facto flat fare any more.

 

[BuhSnarf]

£3 is still a good sensible amount, especially on some of the real long distance routes which were upwards of £6 for a single previously. A good balance instead of scrapping it completely. I would assume they've seen some of the economical benefit the increased bus usage gives.

 

[Bletchleyite]

£3 is still a good sensible amount, especially on some of the real long distance routes which were upwards of £6 for a single previously. A good balance instead of scrapping it completely. I would assume they've seen some of the economical benefit the increased bus usage gives.

It's better than nowt in terms of inclusivity in rural areas, but means a lot of urban passengers are going to be hit with a 50% fare increase unless the City Regions pay to keep it to £2 as Greater Manchester and Leeds are I think doing.

 

[Dent]

Typical politician's double speak from Starmer. Putting bus fares up from £2 to £3 isn't a cap, it's a fare rise of 50%!

By what definition is a cap of £3 not a cap? How does a cap being different to a previous cap make it not a cap?

 

[Kite159]

£3 is better than it getting scrapped.

 

[yorksrob]

Fare rise to £3 just confirmed on the BBC news. A fare rise is never good, however it's good that the flat rate system is being maintained.

 

[The exile]

It's better than nowt in terms of inclusivity in rural areas, but means a lot of urban passengers are going to be hit with a 50% fare increase unless the City Regions pay to keep it to £2 as Greater Manchester and Leeds are I think doing.

This is assuming that they all raise fares to that cap. If they do, it suggests that the cap is still keeping fares down below what they would otherwise have been.

 

[LUYMun]

It seems more of a panicked reaction as it was rumoured the £2 fare cap would be scrapped a few days ago. I would've hoped that a phased withdrawal would be preferable for the longer term (ie £3 until March 2025, £4 'til June, £5 'til September etc.).

 

[Andyh82]

The devil will be in the detail, I.E how long are they committing to £3

If it’s only a year and then it suddenly becomes acceptable to increase it by a pound again, then fares would quickly start getting pretty expensive

Also now it’s all Labour, nationally and at mayoral level, I wonder if there might be any change in London

 

[DaveHarries]

Fare rise to £3 just confirmed on the BBC news. A fare rise is never good, however it's good that the flat rate system is being maintained.

BBC news article is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0l99xz719o

Although I have no doubt that the £2 cap can be sustained by larger operators (GoAhead, Stagecoach, etc) I should think the smaller operators aren't finding it so easy so perhaps this isn't too bad a move and will hopefully help the smaller operators. Although the £3 cap is to the end of 2025 I hope it will go on longer than that because having a fare cap helps me to work out how much I am likely to need from my employer when working.

Dave

 

[CaptainHaddock]

By what definition is a cap of £3 not a cap? How does a cap being different to a previous cap make it not a cap?

Because the word cap is meaningless if the cap is far higher than a typical single fare would be anyway (certainly within urban areas). It's like announcing that there'll be a £1000 cap on rail fares when the highest rail fare is nowhere near that amount!

It's basic maths - if you put the standard bus single fare up from £2 to £3 that's a fare rise of 50%!

 

[Deerfold]

It's better than nowt in terms of inclusivity in rural areas, but means a lot of urban passengers are going to be hit with a 50% fare increase unless the City Regions pay to keep it to £2 as Greater Manchester and Leeds are I think doing.

West Yorkshire Metro has previously said they'll follow the national cap, but with it being such a large rise, I'd expect they'll confirm one way or another, soon. West Yorkshire had plenty of fares between £2 and £3 before the cap.

They've spent more than they'd originally expected as they had planned to have annual increases to the £2, but kept in line with the national £2 scheme.

 

[James H]

Let's get real though - before the cap was announced two years ago, the idea that fares would ever be as low as £2 on many rural / inter-urban routes would be unthinkable.

I'd love to see it maintained but I think £3 is a decent compromise when you look at the longer-term picture.

 

[Deerfold]

Because the word cap is meaningless if the cap is far higher than a typical single fare would be anyway (certainly within urban areas). It's like announcing that there'll be a £1000 cap on rail fares when the highest rail fare is nowhere near that amount!

It's basic maths - if you put the standard bus single fare up from £2 to £3 that's a fare rise of 50%!

There's plenty of fares around the country that were above £3 before the fare cap. I could have paid more than £3 on 3 of the 4 routes past my house. However, unless there's a large increase in Day tickets, a return on all but one of them will be cheaper with one of those than two £3 fares.

 

[stuu]

Because the word cap is meaningless if the cap is far higher than a typical single fare would be anyway (certainly within urban areas). It's like announcing that there'll be a £1000 cap on rail fares when the highest rail fare is nowhere near that amount!

The fares don't have to be flat, and this thread has plenty of examples of fares still being offered that are less than £2.

Rural journeys were often a lot more. Just before covid I can remember buying a return ticket for me and my son (6 or 7 at the time) from Taunton to Wellington, a 6 mile journey. It was £11.50 or something. With inflation since then that would be nearer £15 now

 

[greenline712]

It doesn't mean that all fares will rise to £3 . . . only that the maximum fare will rise to £3. That's still about half what New Barnet to St Albans should be (I was appalled when the single for that journey went above £5, and that was when I revised the fares in 2019!).

If the maximum then rises to around £4 in 2026 . . . that sounds like an exit strategy to me !! At least there has been a decision . . . the last lot couldn't make a decision on how to exit a rice pudding !!

 

[psmith2023]

There's plenty of fares around the country that were above £3 before the fare cap. I could have paid more than £3 on 3 of the 4 routes past my house. However, unless there's a large increase in Day tickets, a return on all but one of them will be cheaper with one of those than two £3 fares.

They will up the metro savers to 5.50

 

[Andyh82]

Looking at Nottingham, which is widely regarded as one of the examples of best practice, a commercial operator not part of First, Arriva etc

They operated flat fares of £2.80 before the price cap, so realistically it might be £3 now already had the cap not existed, so the cap still works at £3

But if it went up to £4 in 2026 you’d hope NCT might revert back to their own pricing and have a flat fare of something like £3.40

 

[K4016td]

Living just outside of London boundary it feels extremly unfair beign treated to twice the fare for buses that are at least twice worse than the ones in London in terms of level of service, timetables, general reliability and value for money. £2 wasn't too much of a difference from London's £1.75, but £3 is almost twice as much.

 

[Deerfold]

Living just outside of London boundary it feels extremly unfair beign treated to twice the fare for buses that are at least twice worse than the ones in London in terms of level of service, timetables, general reliability and value for money. £2 wasn't too much of a difference from London's £1.75, but £3 is almost twice as much.

Though London is likely to have a fare rise for 2025.