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Old people get free buses but no buses to use them on
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
...because the PTA in these parts can't afford to pay the free bus travel and pay for the loss-making routes used exclusively by pensioners.
Young people and students will also lose all discounts to fund this ridiculous measure.
Story.
Yet again politicians show who really matter to them- the old codgers mafia that runs this country. All young people are seen as ASBO kids, and now they can't even afford to go anywhere other than street corners because cheap fares will be hiked or abolished. Student fares will be doubled, pricing poor people out of college because they won't be able to sodding get there.
And they want people on public transport. It'd be cheaper to buy a Lear jet at this rate.
Symptomatic of everything wrong with this country, non?
Young people and students will also lose all discounts to fund this ridiculous measure.
Story.
Yet again politicians show who really matter to them- the old codgers mafia that runs this country. All young people are seen as ASBO kids, and now they can't even afford to go anywhere other than street corners because cheap fares will be hiked or abolished. Student fares will be doubled, pricing poor people out of college because they won't be able to sodding get there.
And they want people on public transport. It'd be cheaper to buy a Lear jet at this rate.
Symptomatic of everything wrong with this country, non?
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
0
Comments
Of course they would. It gives them yet another excuse to grab more power.
The PTA are having to CUT the loss-making routes in order to pay for the free bus passes. Hence the thread title- old people will have free bus travel, but the nearest bus will be a mile away because the local hopper will have been axed. Or the rural bus will have been axed.
Loss-making routes should be kept open unless nobody uses them. Most subsidised routes around here are through housing estates, and all the customers have concessionary fares- the bus hasn't got any commercial passengers on it. So the concessionary fare will be cheaper, but the bus through the estate will be no more, as the PTA won't pay for it and the private bus operator will lose a huge wedge by running it.
This is why I walk everywhere when possible...
The government (local or national) should not expect to get away with simultaneously making driving and parking more expensive whilst forcing people into their cars because the public transport alternatives are limited through lack of proper subsidy.
The marginal cost of driving is only just more than public transport as it is. Without subsidies, there will be no financial incentive to get on a bus and the only reason to do so will be altruism.
That's FirstGroup for you.
But the cost of petrol has shot up, and bus firms have to pay that too. regardless of who ran the bus, the fare increases would have happened. Metro's fares have gone up three times recently, and that's a government-operated system.
The only reason I travel by bus is because the thieving council charge so much for parking. Even then, its only marginally cheaper to go by bus. And my car doesn't have people with BO problems and toddlers in it.