Agreed. The best accountability is the market, where people vote with their feet (sometimes literally) if services don't deliver what they require.
Negative news stories about bus cuts have been a constant hum ever since council finances started to properly crater. Nothing like the brief flash of those other stories. It's more like the anger about the NHS and social care. A constant reminder the government doesn't care.
That's fine if you're ordering everything from one place and thus only paying one delivery fee. On the other hand, one bus trip into town could be used to buy multiple goods from multiple retailers, conduct any other business, go for lunch or a couple of pints and so on.
Surely it's not more proportionately expensive than the delivery fee would be if you were ordering a lower value/quantity of goods online? It also depends on you only comparing the cost of bus fare as essentially a delivery fee. Fair enough if you're specifically making a trip to visit one shop to purchase one - or just a few - low value things, but I have seen the vast amounts of shopping (not just groceries) that some people cart home by bus at the weekends.
For your area, a weekly ticket works out better value from the third day of travel. I don't see how you can argue that £4.80/day or £12.00/week for a multi-operator ticket is expensive.
A multiple item supermarket delivery will cost you much the same as a fewer item Boots or Argos delivery. Yes, if you had deliveries from multiple suppliers the £4.95's would quickly add up.
I wouldn't generally buy £4.95 worth of goods and pay a £4.95 delivery fee, the same as I wouldn't pay £4.80 bus fare to only spend £4.80 when I got there. Both would be delayed / bulked up ahead of need to make the delivery fee / fare more reasonable as part of the total cost. If I do travel I will generally make it a multi-purpose journey.
Indeed, that is my argument. £4.80 for all day travel is very reasonable, £12.00 for all week travel, valid on all operators services, is a bargain. However if all you are doing is a simple round trip into town you pay the same £4.80. If you do three return trips in a week you pay the same £12.00. Depending on which direction you look at it, occasional single/return trips are expensive in comparison to the cost of a daily / weekly ticket or the daily / weekly ticket is cheap in comparison.
All buses run with certain subsidy from public funds. If these were to be all withdrawn, nearly all services would go. Same as with the trains. It's just the way it is.
With the recent largest positive attention to buses given by (both last and this) Government in several generations (if not for all time) I don't think it is reasonable to say 'doesn't care'. Feels like a soundbite harbouring a grudge, frankly!
Sorry, but the money available is finite, and I suspect the majority of the voters would prioritise spending on the NHS etc over the small minority of voters who are parents of 16-18 year olds in genuine hardship over their transport. This does not really affect parents of pupils who live within walking/cycling distance of their educational establishment, nor those who are able to pay where transport is available, or where they would have paid for driving lessons anyway etc. There are numerous groups of citizens campaigning / demanding funding for their particular cause/iniquity (just watch the local TV news each night or at Breakfast) , all with some justification no doubt (including yours), but taxpayers simply cannot afford to fund all of everyones hobby horse. Everybody says their hobby horse is only 'a few millions'.
Yes - there has been a constant hum... All these bus service cuts etc that happened progressively between 2010 and 2020 and where was the anger amongst the masses?
Are those the usual considerations that people go through with almost any purchase. I mean, who hasn't been to a cashpoint and gone "I'm not paying £1.75 to withdraw a tenner"?
Both things are true. Most public transport is already run with subsidy of some form - some overt, some hidden. However, that isn't to say that people want to pay more taxes to pay for better public transport.
Well yes, that's the narrative today.
I do wonder if drivers who are new to the industry since the fare cap started don't actually understand that fares normally vary by distance travelled. Certainly it has made the use of ticket machine records to establish journey patterns next to useless, with many drivers just issuing tickets to the end of the route (which is hardly surprising if everyone asks for £2 without specifying a destination).
There were fares less than £2 in many areas so not certain that's the reason. Possibly poor training or just the individual.
It seems to have worked fine for over 50 years. The ability to charge flat fares and therefore extract any perceived benefits has existed since the very moment buses were redesigned for one person operation (single door, driver-passenger interaction). The lack of customer care during the last few years has far more persuasive underlying reasons than drivers being unable to memorise a fare table.
Except in the last few years, technological advances have meant that drivers need not memorise anything, and stored value/TOTO has also meant that stage based graduated fares are more easily accommodated.
Which bus company is this? The Stagecoach East Midlands app shows fares that are below the cap for appropriate journeys.
They didn't just accept it as normal anymore than they accepted it should be normal to pay two staff members when the job could be done by one at far less cost. They weighed the pros and cons, and found a flat fare approach lacking in merit.
There is the opportunity, but many bus operators do not have (reliable / or at all) tap on tap off equipment capability. I suspect that, with the current turmoil in the industry, operators will rein back such expenditure until the future direction becomes clearer.
On a commercial basis, flat fare systems can be fine for small areas, but simply do not work on longer distance interurban and rural services. When the bulk of UK bus services went over to only being worked by one person, fairly large quantities of short distance passengers in urban areas were still being conveyed. An averaged flat fare (at approximately the middle distance fare) would chase away the short distance passengers and give the furthest distance passengers a cheap ride. Result - revenue loss overall. As it happens, for all sorts of reasons, the short distance passengers have melted away over the years. However, towns/cities have expanded and what was middle distance is the new 'short' distance passengers, and those passengers are now in danger of being priced out should 'commercial' flat fares be applied. Some operators coarsened their fare structure (fewer stages) for one man buses, and a very few tried a flat fare, but there was plenty of resistance from the passengers!
Which operators have tap on tap off, are actually using it for a graduated fare scheme, and it is working reliably?
In what way is a £3 flat fare (so essentially a cap) and variable fares for shorter distances going to achieve anything?
I think that was @RT4038's point on reliability.
The biggest issue that was experienced in Leicester was that there was no way to combine a journey with tap on tap off where the first bus broke down en route (as would happen at least once a week for most regular passengers at the time of introduction).
