TfL's submission to the Comprehensive Spending Review

One thing you have to remember about potential removal of bus passes is the knock on effects. If you remove bus passes you will immediately see a significant drop in bus use, which will result in services being reduced, routes cut, and fares increase.

All of these will tend to make it more attractive to own a car, and thus lead to an increase of car ownership - not something that any government wants to see.

Then there is the fact that a free bus pass encourages pensioners out of the house, meaning that they get more exercise, meaning improved health, meaning less strain on the NHS.

When you come to the 'political' bit, which I hope I can mention here because it's not in any way party related - it's purely a problem for the government of the day.

All the people who are now pensioners spent a good part of their working lives paying for the bus passes for the pensioners of the day. There was little complaint because they knew that they would, in turn, receive the same benefit. The number of voting pensioners is very significant, and it would take a very courageous government to effectively renege on the implied promise of free bus travel for those on pensions.



Although I refer to 'bus passes' above, there is relevance to the topic of the thread because many of the ideas mentioned also apply to the freedom pass - although the political repercussions would, to a certain extent, be different.

If the bus pass was removed when would there be a significant drop in bus usage; early morning?, late evening?, during the day possibly as pensioners who forgo their local shops (which have probably closed) to go to the major retail centres.

If the bus pass was a panacea for local buses then rural counties would have plenty of buses. Have said before the bus pass was a tool of political bribery from it's inception to the all singing dancing freedom pass. The 60+ was Boris's last bribe as mayor.

The children's concession allows middle class parents to send their children to better schools further away such as Cooper's at Upminster or Sacred Heart who are pleased to receive donations from parents. A lot of children emerge from Upminster and Upminster Bridge in the morning so much so that Waitrose had to stop the free coffee in the morning.

Well, very obviously not in the rush hour.



I didn't say it was a 'panacea', or anything close to it.

It's just something that has top be weighed along with all the other factors.



Well, anything that is a benefit to the population, and is paid for by government (i.e. the population themselves) can be considered some form of political bribe.

I'm not sure that thinking along those terms is helpful to intelligent analysis of the problem at hand, although it's an interesting topic within politics itself.

Here we were talking about the universal bus pass, not the freedom pass. (I posted an addendum at the end of the post to explain why talking about the universal pass was largely relevant to the politics of the tfl situation.)

You can't use that in the rush hour (by which I mean the morning as the idea of an evening rush hour seems to have been pretty much abandoned for years, now).

We all know all this, but you were responding to a post about some observations relating to he universal bus pass.

Yes, but... those who 'paid it forward' are now living longer. In 1960 life expectancy was 71 years, in 1990 it was 75, and now it's 81. The rise in state pension age is reflective of this.

I wondered just what the dates mean in the original TfL paper. Jubilee line 25% uplift with new trains has delivery 2024-29. This has 73 trains when the Picc 94 trains are into service 2024-26. Picc train production starts in 2021 (all dates pre-Covid). So perhaps 2024 is Jubilee production start and 2029 is last train into service. The Picc order was placed in Nov. 2018, so on that timescale the Jubilee order would need to be in 2021. Keep a look out for it!
The Northern line 25% uplift has delivery 2024-28 using some of the replaced Jubilee line trains, so 2028 is before the Jubilee delivery of 2029 with the last 10 new trains additional to replacing the old fleet anyway. If they take the trains as they are displaced, it will only be a couple of years for all of them, so a year for around half. The proposal talks of splitting the branches, so rebuilding Camden Town station was in 2017 consultation said to take some four years. So perhaps 2024-28 is the period of works for new station entrance and interchange subways at Camden Town.

No commitments can be made by TfL until a new funding deal has been settled with Government. The current one runs to end of March 2021! I note that 73 trains will cost around £1.9bn plus enabling works, or £26m per train. The Piccadilly “order is for 94 trains and an associated Fleet Services Agreement covering the supply of spares and whole life technical support, a value of approximately £1.5bn”, or £16m per train. The Jubilee trains must include Thales signalling equipment for auto running, whereas the Picc will be manually driven for the time being. Three years of price rises. Longer trains. Smaller order. Since enabling works are extra, that is depot reconfigurations etc., any reason for over 50% extra cost of these trains?