January 2nd - Bus fee cap introduced until end of March

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2023

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Millions of people across England can save money on bus travel with the introduction of a £2 cap on fares for more than 4,600 routes. It lasts until the end of March.

This podcast is free, as is my weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here: https://www.independent.co.uk/newsletters

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder and well
0:06.9	happy new year and especially if you are in one of the areas where the cost of bus travel has just
0:14.4	plummeted the government has subsidised for the next three months so so until the end of March, a whole range of
0:24.4	bus routes around England, which means that the maximum you would pay in those areas, which are
0:31.8	taking part in the scheme, is £2. And just to save you, looking these these things up the government has come up with
0:38.7	them the saving that you would have Lancaster kit to Kendall for instance and you'd save
0:44.8	12 pound 50 plymouth to Exeter nine pounds 20 hull to York six pound 50 and then a
0:52.0	whacking 13 pounds from Leeds to Scarborough. The government says this is
0:57.1	in order to try to lure people back onto the buses. I've been taking a look at how the numbers have
1:04.8	been falling. My goodness, if you just look at the 20 years from 1982 until, well, last year, but of course COVID got in the way,
1:18.3	it's been pretty constant decline from the point of view of bus ridership, really falling very,
1:26.7	very sadly. And actually, the strange thing is that if you look at
1:32.9	buses in London, which are one thing, and obviously only a part of the transport system, what
1:38.6	with the underground, the Elizabeth line, all the overground lines, a couple of trams, but you've still got buses.
1:45.7	People take more trips on London buses than they do in the whole of the rest of the country,
1:51.6	even though you're only talking about one-sixth of the population being in London.
1:58.5	And, well, I've been also looking at the things that people are saying about buses.
2:05.2	So buses have been last in the queue with a fraction of the investment and political attention given to
2:12.4	other shinier things. That was actually Boris Johnson in one of the things that I thought was really encouraging
2:19.2	his bus strategy published in 2020 and that was obviously in the middle of the, sorry, forgive me,
2:26.6	March 2021, middle of the pandemic, but coming up with some really good stuff in terms of how
2:33.2	you get people back on buses.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Independent, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Independent and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.