1p on Fuel Duty to Keep £2 Bus Fare Cap?

[Magdalia]

most people are simply taking the local bus from near where they live to their nearest town or city centre.

That's not correct. Any city or town where the retail, railway station and hospital are not close together will be multinodal, not hub and spoke.

 

[Bluejays]

For many reasons. Perhaps the simplest being that their cars are getting in the way of our buses!

Each person that travels on a bus instead of driving their own car is freeing up some space on the road, making journeys more efficient for everyone, including those still in cars. I think it is entirely reasonable that motorists pay for that, to some extent.

This!

 

[Teapot42]

If you take into account all journeys you may well be right, if you include car, taxi and bicycle trips as well as those on foot.

But of all current (primarily urban) bus journeys people tend to use them primarily for direct trips and another mode for ones where a change of bus would be required - usually that change (given that timetables rarely line up) makes bus such a slow option that even cycling (and sometimes even walking) wins time-wise, particularly if an e-bike is an option. In this sort of situation people wouldn't generally go by bus if they were paid £2 to do so.

Thus I'd stick to my view here - most bus journeys will be return trips on a direct bus into the nearest urban centre. There may be a difference in London where frequencies are very high though, but it would be interesting to see (though I doubt TfL publish) how many Hopper fares are actually used each day as against simple single journeys.

I guess this raises another question is whether it's cost and not just time that is putting people off where more than one bus would be required?

You are certainly right that poor connections and frequency do make it less attractive. This is why I'd like to see investment in improving frequencies as I think the commensurate increase in traffic could well make the additional cost to the taxpayer fairly minor when compared with the benefits. We have had various cuts to our services in recent years, first the withdrawal of direct peak services to Sheffield, then a reduction in our service to hourly, and bus usage has dropped significantly as a result. It really is what could be described as poverty provision rather than an actual attempt to provide a service.

I guess I'm also looking at bus use for commuting where changes are common. Much usage is leisure where connections would be less tolerated.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's not correct. Any city or town where the retail, railway station and hospital are not close together will be multinodal, not hub and spoke.

However most people will only use buses for journeys that are direct, and will use other modes (car, bicycle, foot, taxi) for journeys that are not.

I guess this raises another question is whether it's cost and not just time that is putting people off where more than one bus would be required?

Penalising people financially for not having a direct bus to their destination is indeed one of the bigger issues in the UK's "one ticket per vehicle journey" approach. The timetable is also an issue - we don't plan connections properly.