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Call to make OAPs pay for bus passes

1:00pm Wednesday 8th September 2010 in


A CALL by the boss of Oxford Bus Company to charge pensioners for their national concessionary bus pass has received a mixed reaction from elderly passengers.

Keith Ludeman, chief executive of the Go-Ahead Group, which runs the Oxford Bus Company, said the Government should introduce a one-off charge.

He said the fees, from over 60s, would help plug the £1bn a year running costs of the project.

The scheme, which allows pensioners and disabled passengers to travel on any local bus services in England, will fall under a major review of Government spending next month.

Mr Ludeman, who recently turned 60, said: “People would not object if it meant that this very popular scheme was able to continue.”

The call was welcomed by Roger Jenking, who completed a seven hour journey from Oxford to Crewe, in Cheshire, using only local buses on the first day of the scheme. The 62-year-old, from Joan Lawrence Place, Headington, Oxford, said the pass ought to be means-tested. He said: “Economically and socially it would make a lot of sense and it would be a way of making things more equal.

“People shouldn’t be using their pass for journeys of less than four stops. They should realise people have to pay.

“On the other hand, those who would lose their bus passes if they were means tested would just get back in their cars – and the environmental benefit would be lost.”

Mr Jenking, who uses his pass for journeys to Abingdon and Didcot three times a week, said he would be willing to pay £200.

However the idea was attacked by Bill Jupp, secretary of the retired members of the Unite union in Oxford.

Unite’s former boss, Jack Jones, campaigned for the bus pass for more than 30 years before his death last year.

Mr Jupp, 78, from Arlington Drive, Old Marston, Oxford, said: “It would be a disgrace to start charging for the pass.

“It was such a struggle to get the pass in the first place. The worst thing you can do as a pensioner is to be lonely, sat in your home doing nothing.

“Getting older people out their houses makes them healthier and takes away the burden on the NHS.”

Department for Transport spokesman Rachel Fowell said: “The right to free bus travel for both older and disabled people is enshrined in primary legislation.

“The Government is focusing its efforts on finding efficiencies through reforming the administrative and reimbursement arrangements of the scheme rather than by cutting back on the entitlement offered to older people.”

Comments(21)

terrytowel says...
1:20pm Wed 8 Sep 10

Aren't our elderly worth this great scheme which gives them so much more independence?
I know times are tough but let's not get carried away.

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angela29 says...
2:19pm Wed 8 Sep 10

They might as well make parents pay for the inconvenience of pushchairs and small children...
They are no better than the government !!

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slygirl says...
2:20pm Wed 8 Sep 10

Our elderly have worked all of their lives and yet they are the ones who have the least. Try taking some of the benefits away from these single mothers and immigrants for a change and NOT the elderly folk!

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Scaramuccia says...
2:31pm Wed 8 Sep 10

Only one word to describe this suggestion by the Go Ahead geezer ( who I am zure will NEVER need to use his bus pass like other fatcats in his position "DESPICABLE" sir you should be ashamed.

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angela29 says...
2:33pm Wed 8 Sep 10

Scaramuccia wrote:
Only one word to describe this suggestion by the Go Ahead geezer ( who I am zure will NEVER need to use his bus pass like other fatcats in his position "DESPICABLE" sir you should be ashamed.
I totally agree with you

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Abingdon Neil says...
3:08pm Wed 8 Sep 10

I don't disagree that 'the elderly' deserve a scheme like this.

I'm less sure that I think of everyone over the age of 60 as 'elderly' though.

If savings have to made then I would suggest raising the qualifying age to 65 initially.

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slygirl says...
3:51pm Wed 8 Sep 10

Haha, thats a very good point! 60 is not old at all. look at Richard Branson for example.

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terrytowel says...
4:02pm Wed 8 Sep 10

I'm not sure the last two comments deserve a viewing but hey-ho.

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Diddy OX says...
6:31pm Wed 8 Sep 10

At the end of the day the cupboard is bare thanks to 13 years of poor mismanagement of the economy by the ex-Labour government.Whilst the free bus pass scheme for the elderly is beneficial there are a lot of elderly people with good pensions and savings and cars who use this scheme to the detriment of those less well off pensioners. Surely its only right and proper to means-test the pass so that the poor benefit more, and those that can pay do pay for their own transport.

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Volterra says...
6:38pm Wed 8 Sep 10

Their bus travel is not 'free' - it is subsidised by the tax payer. Whenever something appears free of charge there is always an element of overuse or people abusing the system, e.g. taking A LOT more bus trips than they would under full charge or even a concessionary scheme. Even if OAPs were to be charged a modest sum like 5p per journey they might think twice about whether a particular journey is really necessary. Subsidise to some extent yes, but never give anything away 'free.' In the Soviet Union kids used to play football with loaves of bread as they were practically free of charge.

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wend says...
7:51pm Wed 8 Sep 10

It should be remembered that just because a person is of pensionable age and has a bus pass they don't pay any taxes. Many of us work well into our sixties out of necessity, paying income tax like everybody else, so it could be said that we're subsidising our own bus passes. Incidentally Mr Jenkins is wrong to suggest that journeys of four stops or less should be paid for by pensioners; these are probably the very people who really need the pass. Mr Jenkins may be sprightly enough to walk more than four bus stops with shopping but not everybody is. Personally I would not object to paying a one-off fee of say £50 for the first bus pass and £20 for each renewal but them I'm working at the moment so can afford it.

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FTaylor says...
10:32pm Wed 8 Sep 10

Means testing and charges mean having an army of expensive administrators to run the scheme. Keep it simple! Keep the old folks mobile and involved in city life. Everyone will benefit.

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Andrew:Oxford says...
10:34pm Wed 8 Sep 10

Free travel for everyone over 70 isn't so bad. Under 70 there should be a minimum fare of say 50p

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Ms Fingerpaint says...
1:02am Thu 9 Sep 10

Peopleseem to be condemng Keith Ludeman for calling for a charge for the concessionary bus pass, but he is only trying to protect his business.

People don't realise that we pay for this scheme not once, but TWICE.

Here's how it works:
* A person with a bus pass makes a bus journey
* The driver prints out a ticket, thereby registering the journey on his onboard computer
* At the end of the period, the bus company tots up the price (i.e. the total of what they would've made had fare-paying passengers paid the equivalent price for each journey) and presents a bill to the local authority
* The local authority pays the bus company back out of the budget (i.e. our tax money)
* HOWEVER what the bus company gets back from the authority is only a percentage - they DO NOT get the full amount back
* The bus company has to shoulder the remainder of the cost themselves, so to meet that shortfall they are forced to pass the cost onto fare-paying passenger in the form of price rises - thus we pay a second time.

I have no qualms with free travel for the elderly - to some it means almost literally the world - but the money has to come from somewhere. If it means people pay a nominal fee for their pass, perhaps on a means-tested basis, in order to ensure the survival of the scheme, so be it.

Or perhaps your elderly relatives would like to explain to their grandchildren why there's no money in the pot to pay for new books at their school - because they've spent it all on concessionary pass holder who use the bus to go one or two stops...

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FTaylor says...
9:25am Thu 9 Sep 10

The pensioners are not allowed to travel at peak time in the morning, but only when there are plenty of spare seats on the buses. Many of their journeys would not be made if they had to pay the fares, which are quite steep for people on small incomes. It is not in fact costing the bus company anything for most of the journeys taken by these old folk; they are just using a seat that would otherwise travel empty. Hence the subsidy does not need to be at the full rate and the bus companies are very reasonably compensated by the extra income they receive from the Council.

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Apu Nahasapeemapetilon says...
11:12am Thu 9 Sep 10

Or perhaps your elderly relatives would like to explain to their grandchildren why there's no money in the pot to pay for new books at their school - because they've spent it all on concessionary pass holder who use the bus to go one or two stops...............
...
ERR no actually. It was because we gave many £billions to a bunch of greedy bankers so that they could keep their mews house in Kensington, and Estate in the country, and not, that pensioners don't have to pay exhorbitant bus fares.

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boxfish says...
1:14pm Thu 9 Sep 10

The huge flaw in this free bus pass scheme, which should have been obvious from the start, was the lack of the means to adjust what was offered accordingly to economic circumstances, instead of having an 'all or nothing' approach.

It would have been more sensible to offer the elderly a bus pass that combined identification (photo) with a yearly travel allowance (something like the Oxford Bus Company's 'Key'). People could choose to use the allowance either on lots of short journeys or on fewer longer ones. The allowance could be adjusted according to economic circumstances and the council and the bus companies would know in advance the maximum the scheme would cost.

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wend says...
1:49pm Thu 9 Sep 10

It would be good if the true cost of providing free bus could be identified because I for one only use buses because I have a pass. I would either walk or use my car so the few journeys I do make probably make money for the bus company. When I use the bus I get issued a ticket for that particular journey whereas if I were to buy a one-day pass at £3.70 I could make any number of journeys on that day for this cost. Similarly were I to use the bus every day for a week the difference between that and a 1-week bus costing £13 could be quite significant. I do not know what the bus companies get reimbursed for but it would be interesting to find out.

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West Oxon Webwatcher says...
2:51pm Thu 9 Sep 10

I am a +70 pensioner and use my bus pass. However many years ago when I was in full time employment, I was responsible for the financial administration of a local authority concessionary bus pass scheme. I can tell readers that the calculations that lead up to the payment to a bus operator for the travel of concessionary bus pass holders is a complex calculation that is designed to ensure that the bus company does not get undue reimbursement from public funds. There is a complex calculation called the "generation factor" that is designed to ensure that the company does not get more revenue than if there was no concession so that if as a result of the concession people travel more, the bus company does not benefit. In my days there was always some form of charge to the user. However with the free travel now, it is difficult to work out that calculation and it has led to a lot of argument between the bus companies and the local authorities as to what is a fair and reasonable reimbursement. The bus companies always claim that they are losing out when negotiating with the local authorities. However with concessionary travel only available after the peak hour when many buses would have few people on them, there is normally no need for the bus company to run extra buses to cope with concessionary travel demand and therefore any extra funding the company gets helps balance the cost of running the buses. Whilst the bus companies continue to claim that they lose out, it is intersting to read the last annual report of Stagecoach on its finances. It declares that its finances have been protected from the recession by the existence of regular income from the concessionary bus travel scheme. So its says one thing to its shareholder and another to the local authorities that pay for the travel. In fact provided the bus companies do not have to put on extra buses to cope with the old folk, the marginal cost of carrying them is negligible. If the company can show it has to provide extra buses, it can claim the extra cost back. Those bus users who complain about the free travel of pensioners should remember that without the income the bus company gets from the the local authority, they would probably have a much reduced level of service. Here endedth the lesson! My personal view is that so called free services encourage over use beyond need and I would not object to paying a modest sum from my pension income either in the form of an annual payment to use the card or a charge per journey of, say, 50 pence per journey. However in West Oxon I would if I were to be so charged, I would wish to see car owners paying a resonable charge to park in the currently free West Oxon car parks that I help pay for through my council tax!

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Green123 says...
3:30pm Thu 9 Sep 10

I commute into Oxford by bus. My return journey to Oxford costs almost £70 a month. Several of my colleagues who are aged over 60 do the same job and recieve the same pay. They travel to work every day but have adjusted their working hours so they can travel after 9.30am for free.

I have no problem with 'the elderly' having a free bus pass. But people who are still working and have an income sufficient to pay for their travel should not be entitled to this pass.

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Apu Nahasapeemapetilon says...
4:30am Sun 12 Sep 10

Green123 wrote:
I commute into Oxford by bus. My return journey to Oxford costs almost £70 a month. Several of my colleagues who are aged over 60 do the same job and recieve the same pay. They travel to work every day but have adjusted their working hours so they can travel after 9.30am for free. I have no problem with 'the elderly' having a free bus pass. But people who are still working and have an income sufficient to pay for their travel should not be entitled to this pass.
What a sad jealous person you are. I hope that (if) you get old, you will have the same veiws. Take a good look at yourself, and think.

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