Bus travel to cost £3 from 2025
The fare cap for bus travel in England will increase by 50% from £2 to £3, starting January 2025. The news was confirmed by Starmer at an event in Birmingham today (Monday, 28 October 2024), ahead of his Government's Autumn Budget on Wednesday.
This is the first increase to the cap since the 'Get Around for £2' scheme was introduced in 2023, under the Sunak Conservative government. It was initially due to run for three months but was repeatedly extended, most recently up until the end of 2024.
The updated scheme will run to at least the end of 2025. It means that the Treasury will spend less on subsiding single ticket bus fares.
However, what it doesn't subsidise is passed on to the public. Granted, the difference is £1, but that will add up for commuters who rely on the bus to get to work, school, and elsewhere, every day.
Two bus trips a day, five days a week will cost you £20. From 2025, that week's worth of travel will cost £30. That amounts to hundreds of pounds extra over the year, likely to the detriment of working people.
Some bus operators have weekly caps for frequent users, in addition to the Government scheme. It remains to be seen whether these will increase, and if so, whether they increase by as much as 50%.
Concerns have also been raised about the impact it will have on passenger numbers.
And it is almost ironic. You can quite easily imagine, if they were still in opposition, that this would be the kind of change that Labour would immediately object to, in defence of the working people affected by it.
Yet the press release presents it solely as an all-positive, handy-dandy investment in public transport, as if there was no increase at all. Quite literally — there is no mention at all of the previous £2 cap.
It's unfortunate.
