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> Back then, your bus might have been bendy and cost between 70p and £1 to board. Oh I remember. Now it's £1.55 and rising. Public transport in the UK is now b

by saos 5y ago

> Back then, your bus might have been bendy and cost between 70p and £1 to board. Oh I remember. Now it's £1.55 and rising. Public transport in the UK is now becoming luxury

BoxOfRain 5y ago
London is pretty amazing for public transport as well by British standards. I took up cycling when the office moved because my new bus route was just under £6 to go about six miles, which took an hour each way according to the timetable but in reality the first bus would be 30-40 minutes late in the morning if it bothered to turn up at all, and it only came every hour and a half.
- the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
  It's still crazy expensive. An annual ticket for zone 1-5 costs 2500 pounds. For that price you get two annual adult tickets for all of public transport in Austria or 80% of a ticket for all of Switzerland.
  - vinay427 5y ago
    I agree; that's insanely expensive especially given the cost of living in other aspects compared to Switzerland. To add, this GA/AG pass in Switzerland includes essentially all travel except for a few funiculars, gondolas, and other specialized modes for leisure purposes. That means virtually every train in the country with the densest railway network outside of city-states as well as local transit (buses, local trains, ferries, etc.) is included. Granted, Switzerland isn't a large country, but its public transit coverage is overrepresented, making it seem like a far better deal than this annual London zone pass.
  - zahllos 5y ago
    I agree, having lived in both the UK and Switzerland. If you can justify the cost, the GA in Switzerland is incredible and works for most trains, buses and boats in the country (the exceptions are usually private touristy rail routes that go up mountains). People can and do commute from Geneva to Zurich in a day and have mobile data the whole way. Outside of London, UK public transport varies greatly in quality and all of it is very expensive and overpriced. UK season tickets for lines outside of London typically involve a fixed route on one operator and usually only support commuting: one there and back journey 5 days per week max. By contrast, the GA in Switzerland really is unlimited. It will work equally well for boats crossing the lake in Geneva as it will for the local trams in Zürich and the train to get you between them, even if you travel on a Sunday. It doesn't matter if you present it to cantonal transport people, or private train operators, it will work, no arguments. Pretty much the only people not part of the GA scheme are tourist train routes up mountains, and to be honest, that's fair enough - staff to the facilities on the top likely get a free ride up anyway and nobody else needs to commute to the top of the Jungfrau.
edwardwatson 5y ago
Counterintuitively, it's even worse out of London where salaries are lower. In Nottingham, a 15 minute bus ride to work costs me £3 (so I cycle).
- OJFord 5y ago
  It's just about volume isn't it? Fewer people making the journey means it needs to cost more to be profitable/cover costs/whatever applicable.
  - switch007 5y ago
    Other cities have plenty of bus riders
  - lkramer 5y ago
    I remember London public transportation used to be shit and expensive. Disregarding his later downfall, Ken Levingstone did a tremendous job during his tenure as mayor, with Oyster card, introducing the congestion (which subsidises TfL) and convincing the train companies to jump in the scheme as well. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons public transportation outside london is so poor in comparison is that councils outside London are not allowed to subsidise it the same way London is. They are also forced to use private operators.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
The inflation calculator of the BoE says that the average inflation between 2003 and 2020 was 2.9% per year, which means that £1 in 2003 was £1.62 in 2020. So the price you mention is not bad.
tialaramex 5y ago
But it's £1.55 for up to an hour of new bus journeys in the system. So this means you can reasonably take two (or more) buses if that's a sensible way to make your journey rather than considering that each is priced separately so you should try to choose only the single longest bus journey for your trip. You can do this with the tube, although it's less often necessary, e.g. suppose you're at Barbican and you live in Amersham. It might happen that your tube from Barbican turns into a Fast to Amersham and that's actually a reasonable way to get home. But much more likely you should disembark at Baker Street, leave the station, walk a few minutes to Marylebone, tap back in and board a mainline train to Amersham, since that's actually the same exact system and counts as a single Oyster journey between Barbican and Amersham.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  One hour or five minutes, it doesn't matter, because either way, for commuters it's 2x1.55gbp, or twice as much as before. If the average paycheck hasn't gone up by that much in this time, it's more expensive for the user.
  - martimarkov 5y ago
    Please calculate it with the inflation and revisit your statement.
    - als0 5y ago
      Last time I checked…average salaries have not kept up with inflation. So I think their point is still valid even if you account for inflation.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        Well.. it just depends, are you marking to inflation, or to salaries? If you say those are out of sync, then you can't really be surprised when something else looks in line (or closer) with one but not the other.
asdff 5y ago
I'm surprised fares are even increasing. No taxes to support transit? In LA County only like 5% of revenue came from the farebox so they are making buses and trains free for students and low income people. The rest comes from sales taxes within the county and federal and state funding.
- basisword 5y ago
  You can see how they’re funded on their website[0]. I don’t think the city has the power to tax locally in the way LA might and funding London public transport out of general tax money would never go down well politically. [0] https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/investors/funding-sources https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/investors/funding-sources
  - asdff 5y ago
    The county didn't have the power either to do it themselves, it ended up being the voters who approved the additional sales tax (iirc another 1%) at the ballot box. We are probably comparing apples and oranges though, too many differences in government.
jjgreen 5y ago
In Sheffield in the early `80s, the then-radical David Blunkett instituted a "transport for all" policy which made most bus journeys 5p (at a time when a pint of beer was 50p). As it was no longer economic to have people collecting fares, they had a machine whereby you dropped coins into a hopper, and it printed out a ticket which was a copy of the coins, vertically (carbon-paper style). Students in the city would regularly put a handfull of pennies into the hopper and get a 4-5 foot ticket which they used to decorate their digs.

by saos 5y ago

> Back then, your bus might have been bendy and cost between 70p and £1 to board. Oh I remember. Now it's £1.55 and rising. Public transport in the UK is now becoming luxury

BoxOfRain 5y ago

London is pretty amazing for public transport as well by British standards. I took up cycling when the office moved because my new bus route was just under £6 to go about six miles, which took an hour each way according to the timetable but in reality the first bus would be 30-40 minutes late in the morning if it bothered to turn up at all, and it only came every hour and a half.

the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
It's still crazy expensive. An annual ticket for zone 1-5 costs 2500 pounds. For that price you get two annual adult tickets for all of public transport in Austria or 80% of a ticket for all of Switzerland.
- vinay427 5y ago
  I agree; that's insanely expensive especially given the cost of living in other aspects compared to Switzerland. To add, this GA/AG pass in Switzerland includes essentially all travel except for a few funiculars, gondolas, and other specialized modes for leisure purposes. That means virtually every train in the country with the densest railway network outside of city-states as well as local transit (buses, local trains, ferries, etc.) is included. Granted, Switzerland isn't a large country, but its public transit coverage is overrepresented, making it seem like a far better deal than this annual London zone pass.
- zahllos 5y ago
  I agree, having lived in both the UK and Switzerland. If you can justify the cost, the GA in Switzerland is incredible and works for most trains, buses and boats in the country (the exceptions are usually private touristy rail routes that go up mountains). People can and do commute from Geneva to Zurich in a day and have mobile data the whole way. Outside of London, UK public transport varies greatly in quality and all of it is very expensive and overpriced. UK season tickets for lines outside of London typically involve a fixed route on one operator and usually only support commuting: one there and back journey 5 days per week max. By contrast, the GA in Switzerland really is unlimited. It will work equally well for boats crossing the lake in Geneva as it will for the local trams in Zürich and the train to get you between them, even if you travel on a Sunday. It doesn't matter if you present it to cantonal transport people, or private train operators, it will work, no arguments. Pretty much the only people not part of the GA scheme are tourist train routes up mountains, and to be honest, that's fair enough - staff to the facilities on the top likely get a free ride up anyway and nobody else needs to commute to the top of the Jungfrau.

edwardwatson 5y ago

Counterintuitively, it's even worse out of London where salaries are lower. In Nottingham, a 15 minute bus ride to work costs me £3 (so I cycle).

OJFord 5y ago
It's just about volume isn't it? Fewer people making the journey means it needs to cost more to be profitable/cover costs/whatever applicable.
- switch007 5y ago
  Other cities have plenty of bus riders
- lkramer 5y ago
  I remember London public transportation used to be shit and expensive. Disregarding his later downfall, Ken Levingstone did a tremendous job during his tenure as mayor, with Oyster card, introducing the congestion (which subsidises TfL) and convincing the train companies to jump in the scheme as well. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons public transportation outside london is so poor in comparison is that councils outside London are not allowed to subsidise it the same way London is. They are also forced to use private operators.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

The inflation calculator of the BoE says that the average inflation between 2003 and 2020 was 2.9% per year, which means that £1 in 2003 was £1.62 in 2020. So the price you mention is not bad.

tialaramex 5y ago

But it's £1.55 for up to an hour of new bus journeys in the system. So this means you can reasonably take two (or more) buses if that's a sensible way to make your journey rather than considering that each is priced separately so you should try to choose only the single longest bus journey for your trip. You can do this with the tube, although it's less often necessary, e.g. suppose you're at Barbican and you live in Amersham. It might happen that your tube from Barbican turns into a Fast to Amersham and that's actually a reasonable way to get home. But much more likely you should disembark at Baker Street, leave the station, walk a few minutes to Marylebone, tap back in and board a mainline train to Amersham, since that's actually the same exact system and counts as a single Oyster journey between Barbican and Amersham.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
One hour or five minutes, it doesn't matter, because either way, for commuters it's 2x1.55gbp, or twice as much as before. If the average paycheck hasn't gone up by that much in this time, it's more expensive for the user.
- martimarkov 5y ago
  Please calculate it with the inflation and revisit your statement.
  - als0 5y ago
    Last time I checked…average salaries have not kept up with inflation. So I think their point is still valid even if you account for inflation.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Well.. it just depends, are you marking to inflation, or to salaries? If you say those are out of sync, then you can't really be surprised when something else looks in line (or closer) with one but not the other.

asdff 5y ago

I'm surprised fares are even increasing. No taxes to support transit? In LA County only like 5% of revenue came from the farebox so they are making buses and trains free for students and low income people. The rest comes from sales taxes within the county and federal and state funding.

basisword 5y ago
You can see how they’re funded on their website[0]. I don’t think the city has the power to tax locally in the way LA might and funding London public transport out of general tax money would never go down well politically. [0] https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/investors/funding-sources https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/investors/funding-sources
- asdff 5y ago
  The county didn't have the power either to do it themselves, it ended up being the voters who approved the additional sales tax (iirc another 1%) at the ballot box. We are probably comparing apples and oranges though, too many differences in government.

jjgreen 5y ago

In Sheffield in the early `80s, the then-radical David Blunkett instituted a "transport for all" policy which made most bus journeys 5p (at a time when a pint of beer was 50p). As it was no longer economic to have people collecting fares, they had a machine whereby you dropped coins into a hopper, and it printed out a ticket which was a copy of the coins, vertically (carbon-paper style). Students in the city would regularly put a handfull of pennies into the hopper and get a 4-5 foot ticket which they used to decorate their digs.