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

[1D54]

Indeed. If you work a five day week and commute by bus Labour have just put up your commuting costs by £10 a week. So much for not putting taxes up for working people.

Precisely and the weekly travel pass will save me £2.50 a week as i need an East Midlands Arriva Ticket as i work just outside the Leicester Zone.

Never mind. Have Railcard and can do the six mile trip for £2.35 return a day if booked in advance, if not I'll still never be paying the new bus price.

 

[JD2168]

The fare cap increase to £3 is ok with myself & is better than scrapping it completely as fare would’ve rocketed overnight. Particularly on routes like Coastliner, Stagecoach X17 between Wirksworth & Barnsley & 56 between Lincoln & Skegness where route patronage has increased with the cap.

Here in South Yorkshire there are still fares available under £2, Most First adult singles start at £1.40 & Stagecoach singles start around £1.60. Lower fares are available for students & children.

 

[Merle Haggard]

Still small fry in the grand scheme of things. I appreciate lots of small subsidies across many areas of public spending soon add up to a much larger amount.
But as far as transport concerned this isn't a huge amount. Does encourage increased bus usage, if route is frequent. My usual reason for driving is bus isn't frequent enough but that's another issue and appreciate buses don't just run for me!!

Since the £2 cap, and the removal of the blanket COVID restrictions on bus use, I have been using buses more frequently (mainly to and from railway stations) and it's clear that, certainly around here, there are many people who travel to work by bus. As you say, even £360,000,000 is small (about 1 1/2 % of the black hole) and it seems odd to me that the only two Government statements about cutting expenditure made so far have each saved, in the scale of expenditure, very little. I would have thought that it was mainly workers on limited incomes that will be affected by an effective 50% increase in their fares and I really don't understand why the Government has made it a priority announcement, in advance of the Budget.

 

[GusB]

I was referring to the Lib Dems response to Starmer's announcement.

'Bus tax' as fares to rise from £2 to £3 in Autumn Budget

The bus fare cap in England will rise from £2 to £3 at the end of this year, Keir Starmer has said, as Rachel Reeves prepares to raid transport funding in this week’s budget.

uk.news.yahoo.com

It took a while to actually find the LibDem's reponse in the article (you are supposed to quote the relevant bits), but all I could find was this:

Lib Dem's Tim Farron criticises move as a 'bus tax'

Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson Tim Farron MP described the move as "without a doubt a bus tax".

I'm also rather disappointed by the Greens' reponse:

Meanwhile, co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Carla Denyer, posted to social media to say: "The Labour government has confirmed a 50% rise in bus fares - a blow for everyone who relies on buses in the cost of living crisis.
"This is the wrong approach – government should be supporting our economy and environment by making it easier to get around without a car."

It's not a 50% fare increase - it's a 50% increase in the cap on fares. I don't doubt that some unscrupulous operators will use it to their advantage, but they'd also have abused the £2 cap too.

As someone who lives in Scotland where there has been no such cap, I'd be biting the hand off anyone who proposed such a scheme! A single for my 7 mile journey into town is £5.90, with a period return fare of £11.30. A day ticket is £7.80, so a £3 cap would save me a fair amount of money.

I'm not against the idea of a fare cap, but I think it needs to be revised so that the distance travelled is taken into account. It should be intended to reduce the fares of regular travellers making essential journeys, rather than providing a mechanism for people to have a cheap day out.

 

[Snex]

This should be scrapped and replaced with something else now imo.

All it's done now is made it completely irrelevent in urban areas (£3 is way too expensive if the fares are above that) but still allowing the stupid fares like Whitby to Middlesbrough or Scarborough to Leeds which shouldn't be £3 and are a complete waste of tax payers money and are also undercutting the train so it's effectively a double tax.

Personally, I'd rather see the money given to local authorities / metro regions and let them do their own schemes with a focus on cheaper multi modal ticketing across all bus operators, with weekly and monthly tickets being part of it. One scheme to fit all, doesn't work imo.

 

[joieman]

A lot of bus operators have highlighted the difficulty of promoting their own multi-journey and period products due to the £2 fare. The increase will make this easier.

I commute from into Leicester four days a week; since I live well outside Leicester, a day ticket will still cost more than two singles, and buying a weekly ticket would still also cost more. And that's with Arriva's East Midlands Zone tickets, never mind Trentbarton's Zigzag Plus tickets! In short, nope.

 

[LUYMun]

Indeed. If you work a five day week and commute by bus Labour have just put up your commuting costs by £10 a week. So much for not putting taxes up for working people.

£10 per week isn't much in the grand scheme of things. Regular commuters wouldn't have paid the £2 cap on a daily basis since weekly, monthly or annual bus passes would've proven better value for money for them, so regardless if the cap was raised or wiped out it'll remain their status quo.

 

[Bletchleyite]

£10 per week isn't much in the grand scheme of things.

For a lot of bus users £10 per week is significant. This is one of the few changes they could make that will harm the poor above all else - bizarre for a Labour Government to do it, really, given the tiny saving made.

 

[LUYMun]

For a lot of bus users £10 per week is significant.

The rest of my quote explains why it wouldn't for regular passengers who needs to make ends meet.

This is one of the few changes they could make that will harm the poor above all else - bizarre for a Labour Government to do it, really, given the tiny saving made.

Not bizarre at all, rather orchestrated by the previous Tory government. Rather than gradually raising the fare cap to £2.50 for the latter half of 2024, the scrapping of HS2 phase 2 allowed the fare to be kept at £2. With the Tories given the boot at the July election, Labour would've faced severe scrutiny by the press and opposition party if they chose not to carefully deal with the aftermath of a policy their predecessors enacted. I saw this a mile coming when the whole "Backing Drivers" et al announcement was made this time last year.

 

[mangad]

The rest of my quote explains why it wouldn't for regular passengers who needs to make ends meet.

Not bizarre at all, rather orchestrated by the previous Tory government. Rather than gradually raising the fare cap to £2.50 for the latter half of 2024, the scrapping of HS2 phase 2 allowed the fare to be kept at £2.

The scrapping of HS2 phase 2 certainly didn't allow the fare to be kept at £2 because HS2 is funded by borrowing. Didn't fill in any potholes either. Don't build something and you don't need to borrow the money thus there was no saving. That was all smoke and mirrors. The funding to keep the £2 fare simply came out of the DfT pot.

 

[GusB]

£10 per week isn't much in the grand scheme of things. Regular commuters wouldn't have paid the £2 cap on a daily basis since weekly, monthly or annual bus passes would've proven better value for money for them, so regardless if the cap was raised or wiped out it'll remain their status quo.

For a lot of bus users £10 per week is significant. This is one of the few changes they could make that will harm the poor above all else - bizarre for a Labour Government to do it, really, given the tiny saving made.

I think we're at risk of forgetting how much those fares would have been before any cap was introduced. Yesterday I listened to radio interview with a young person who said that his fares were going up by 50%, yet there was absolutely no mention of what the fare was prior to the cap being introduced.

It also made me wonder whether the interviewee was using the correct ticket for the journeys he was making.

A 50% increase in the cap might seem harsh, but for many people it will still represent a significant saving compared to the full fare that was being charged before. As I mentioned in my last post, my single fare to go to town is £5.80 - a £3 cap would be most welcome.

 

[Blindtraveler]

On the one hand, I guess we should be grateful that we still have a fair cap at all, but on the other I do think that they might have introduced some kind of alternative measure to raise Capital instead, especially given that public transport not only is vital to those with least in society but also the increasingly vocal green agenda, of which I am absolutely not a part. Part but it is still relevant as they are trying to discourage private car use and get more people travelling by bus and on foot
I suppose we should however be grateful as no such scheme exists in the devolved Nations and in some cases fairs there can be extremely high

 

[davews]

Yes the media seem to be totally misunderstanding the 'cap'. Also saying that pensioners will be hard hit - no they won't as they all have their bus passes and suggestions that those are going to be removed as well seem to have gone at least for the moment.

 

[Ghostbus]

I still can't get my head around the messaging that tax payers will understand the need for difficult choices, hence the rise in the cap. Most people who used buses aren't taxpayers, either because they're too old, too young or too poor.

 

[8ace]

There will often be a weekly ticket available for less than £30.

Exactly. There will probably be further savings to be had buying a monthly, 3 monthly or annual ticket. For those that can't afford the outlay employers (well mine does) have schemes to loan you the money for the cost of annual pass. Even if your employer doesn't the East Sussex credit union offer a loans scheme to assist with this.

 

[yorksrob]

It's very poor that a Tory government thought several hundred million pounds in extra annual bus subsidy was good value but a Labour one is apparently thinking it won't be. What's the 2026 subsidy going to look like? Buses are great value for money.


Even at £500 million it's a bargain imo.

£2 is too cheap for £10+ journeys but my local short route will now be £3 for just over a mile. Might as well go back to the car although will do the right thing and still use the bus at times.

I agree that £360k is good value in the scheme of things.

I also can't help wondering what a national railcard or off-peak Fridays would cost, for those of us who pay the "train tax".

For a lot of bus users £10 per week is significant. This is one of the few changes they could make that will harm the poor above all else - bizarre for a Labour Government to do it, really, given the tiny saving made.

I wonder how much of it's about "looking hard" for the markets ahead of the budget.

 

[Wolfie]

If the government decides to completely scrap the £2 fare cap at the end of December, what are bus companies most likely to do? Will they go back to exactly the same fare structures for pricing single fares as 2 years ago? There is, of course 2 years worth quite high of inflation to consider which would result in fares being much higher than 2 years ago. The price of day tickets has continued to rise with inflation during the period of the £2 cap. My local Stagecoach day ticket was £7.90 at the end of 2022. During the last 2 years this first rose to £8.50 and more recently another increase to £9.50. Is there any chance that some individual bus companies will initially price single fares at a level lower than they were before the £2 cap to soften the blow.

No chance. Most, if not all, bus companies in England have been increasing single and return fares too in parallel with period tickets - there may well have been subsidy implications - albeit that the public has only actually been paying £2 for a single.

 

[DDB]

A quick glance at the headlines of the papers as I rushed through my local shop didn't have any sign of this being the headline this morning so the press have already moved on. I suspect because no one actually surprised. I suppose it might come back as a story on the day the fare cap increase happens.

 

[londonteacher]

A quick glance at the headlines of the papers as I rushed through my local shop didn't have any sign of this being the headline this morning so the press have already moved on. I suspect because no one actually surprised. I suppose it might come back as a story on the day the fare cap increase happens.

Why would it be headline news though? It probably has an article inside them somewhere. There is other more important and wider reaching news such as the extra money for GP appointments.

I’m really pleased that the fare cap is remaining at an increased price. But, I have been purchasing and stocking up on £2 tickets on the apps of the companies I use in Medway and Kent to save some money. It’s great as I still have one more monthly ticket from before it increased earlier this year. Would recommend others do the same!

 

[wilbers]

I agree that £360k is good value in the scheme of things.

That would be extreme , though I think everyone knows you meant £360M.

 

[yorksrob]

That would be extreme , though I think everyone knows you meant £360M.

Oops, yes (£360k would be very good value indeed !)

 

[Wolfie]

Oops, yes (£360k would be very good value indeed !)

Just a few zeros missing lol.....

 

[stevieinselby]

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%!

When the fares up to 2022 were unlimited (fares on longer routes could easily get into double figures), and would again be without government intervention, it's a cap.

For a lot of passengers, the rise will be less than 50%, especially regular passengers who can make use of daily or period tickets (and in some cases probably do now as it can be cheaper even with the £2 cap).

The current scheme was only funded to the end of this year, and so if the government did nothing then some passengers would see increases of 500% or more.

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.

Not necessarily.
For example, York has an all-operator day ticket that is currently £4.80 a day, £19.50 a week or £70 a month.
For people travelling 5 days a week, the monthly ticket is already cheaper than buying two £2 singles every day, let alone for people who need to catch more than two buses a day.
Even if people go to the day ticket it's only a 20% increase on two singles.
That ticket has been around for years, there's no reason to think the price will increase other than by inflation rates with the end of the 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%!

Non-sequitur.
If £3 is higher than the typical single fare then prices won't increase by 50% because they will be below the cap.

 

[Malaxa]

A quick glance at the headlines of the papers as I rushed through my local shop didn't have any sign of this being the headline this morning so the press have already moved on. I suspect because no one actually surprised. I suppose it might come back as a story on the day the fare cap increase happens.

Of course, if the duty on fuel was to be increased by a farthing per litre the headlines in the newspaper rack would be a different story....

 

[stevieinselby]

Did the tories bring in the bus cap to cause problems for labour? When they introduced it last year they would have known they were going to lose the election and it would make labour unpopular if they had to get rid of it.

I don't think they brought it in to cause problems for Labour – bearing in mind it was originally just for 3 months, and then for another 3 months.
But yes, the extension to the end of 2024 was definitely political – the twin strands of (1) setting a bear trap for Labour with unfunded commitments that they would have to either find the money for or cancel, and (ii) a supposed justification for vandalising our long-term rail strategy as that's what paid for the bus fare cap.

What about very short rides. 2-3 stops. Will they be £3 or less? This has never been clear with the £2 scheme.

The scheme was always that £2 was a maximum. Plenty of operators have cheaper fares for very short journeys even with it at £2, but equally plenty don't because their minimum fare was already £2 or higher. With the cap rising to £3, there are likely to be even more journeys that are below the cap rate, and especially more journeys where it will be cheaper to buy a return than two singles.

 

[Starmill]

Non-sequitur.
If £3 is higher than the typical single fare then prices won't increase by 50% because they will be below the cap.

I don't think it's a non-sequitur at all. When a cap is announced there's a strong incentive by operators to charge the full amount permitted under the cap, even if a freer market might have produced, say, a £2.80 single.

Out of interest how many areas of the England do you think offered "typical single" fares under £3 before the cap, presumably short distance only? How many would now under an un-capped scenario?

In 2022 many single fares in Greater Manchester for 3-10 mile journeys were about £5. I'd say that we're common across England. There were a few outliers like NXWM but of course in the case of Greater Manchester and Greater London fares etc the existing £2 cap for England didn't actually apply anyway.

 

[aavm]

"Scrapping the £2 bus fare cap is a disgraceful decision that will harm the poorest in society, and discourage public transport at a time when it is needed more than ever. Why is the government punishing people for trying to get to work?" -- Corbyn on Twitter.

Not often the Conservatives and Corbyn are on the same side

 

[Man of Kent]

a supposed justification for vandalising our long-term rail strategy as that's what paid for the bus fare cap.

Somewhat hyperbolic - you don't get a lot of railway built for £360m, nor indeed subsidised: the nationalised South Eastern franchise has recently been reported as now costing £415m per annum (which at 128m passengers works out at a subsidy per passenger of £3.24).

 

[duncombec]

It's somewhat amusing, as someone not in the industry, that some of the commented posted here, either from individual posters or reporting other politicians, are expressing exactly some of the scenarios that led many small operators to decide not to join the scheme.

I can't remember the exact words so won't put it in quotation marks, but in his 2022 Omnibus Society Presidential Address, Anthony Delaine-Smith broadly commented that the absence of exit strategy, and who would be responsible for telling passengers the 'bad news', was one reason they decided it wasn't for them.

Were it not for the fact they are politicians, the factual inaccuracies of some of the statements made by politicians over this would be quite alarming...

 

[JamesT]

I don't think it's a non-sequitur at all. When a cap is announced there's a strong incentive by operators to charge the full amount permitted under the cap, even if a freer market might have produced, say, a £2.80 single.

Out of interest how many areas of the England do you think offered "typical single" fares under £3 before the cap, presumably short distance only? How many would now under an un-capped scenario?

In 2022 many single fares in Greater Manchester for 3-10 mile journeys were about £5. I'd say that we're common across England. There were a few outliers like NXWM but of course in the case of Greater Manchester and Greater London fares etc the existing £2 cap for England didn't actually apply anyway.

That sounds surprisingly expensive. I thought it was supposed to be cheap up North?
Oxford has fares under the current cap, a 1.5 mile journey from my house would only be £1.50 today. Pre-cap, the 5 mile journey to the train station was only £2.50.