From today's Daily Telegraph:
Grant Shapps plans £2 cap for every bus journey in England
By Charles Hymas Home Affairs Editor
The Daily Telegraph
15 Aug 2022
EVERY bus journey would be capped at £2 to help British people cope with the cost of living crisis under plans drawn up by Grant Shapps.
Writing for The Telegraph online, the Transport Secretary is proposing a £260 million taxpayers’ subsidy to cut the cost of bus journeys that would save £3 on a single ticket for many hard-pressed families.
Mr Shapps said it would provide guaranteed help to families most in need who cannot afford to own a car and are the biggest users of buses for travel.
“The most vulnerable in our society need concrete help in the coming year, measures that make an immediate and tangible difference to daily spending,” he said.
“And a simple way to do this is reduce the burden on those of us who rely on buses to get to work, the shops and the GP. Buses are for all of us, the most ubiquitous form of public transport.”
Mr Shapps is understood to have been working on the scheme since earlier this year to address a long-standing anomaly where bus services in England are more expensive and less frequent than in London, where pay-as-you-go fares are a flat rate of £1.65 if made within an hour.
It was given impetus by the soaring price of fuel, which meant travel by car was being priced out for more Britons. The plan is understood to have been under consideration by Downing Street before Boris Johnson announced his departure, but faced resistance from the Treasury.
It was being pencilled in to coincide with the huge anticipated rise in the energy cap on heating bills from the current £1,971 to around £3,600 in October.
The proposal is likely to be considered by the victor in the Tory leadership contest who is due to be announced on Sept 5.
The move would replicate governments across Europe who are slashing the price of public transport.
In Ireland fares have been cut by 20 per cent, while in Germany a ticket costing €9 (£7.62) gives unlimited travel for a month in June, July or August on local or regional public transport.
City-wide price caps of £2 are also being devised by Labour mayors, including Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire, Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester and Steve Rotheram in Liverpool City Region. They will begin in the autumn and remain for three years.
In his article, Mr Shapps said the £2 fare cap, lasting 12 months, would apply to every bus journey in England outside London from this autumn.
He said it would be “a simple measure that provides some much-needed reassurance deep into 2023”.
With a pre-pandemic annual total of some four billion journeys, bus travel dwarfs rail travel with car-less households making four times as many bus journeys as car owners.
Government data show the lowestearning 20 per cent of the population made 75 local bus trips in 2019 on average, as opposed to 31 for the highest-earning 20 per cent.
“Bus fares across the country vary considerably and can reach £5 for a single local journey. So a potential 60 per cent saving would no doubt be welcome,” said Mr Shapps.
He said a bus fare cap could also generate new business for the sector, with a government-sponsored pilot flat rate ticket scheme in Cornwall already boosting bus use by some 10 per cent since its start.
The price cap will not apply to long-distance scheduled coach services, and nor will it be applied in Scotland or Wales.