Transport Times (Jan 27)
Adam Raphael
“I LOVE using my Freedom Pass, which entitles me to free travel in Greater London. But why should I, and characters like me, be subsidised to the tune of £200 million a year?
“A minority of the elderly are not well off and for [them] the free travel concession is important. But to equate old age and poverty is folly. One highly-paid male publishing executive . . . told me gleefully that . . . his newly-acquired Freedom Pass is worth at least £1,000 a year to him.
“Subsidising old peoples’ travel has cost the 33 London boroughs more than £2.6 billion over the past 22 years. A sensible political maxim is to stop digging when you are in a hole. This Government appears determined to do the opposite. From this April, it will replace the national half-fare off-peak bus concession for those over 60 with free bus travel, at a cost of £350 million.
“It would be relatively easy to [have] a selective concessionary travel scheme based on income-tax codes. Everyone would pay something, but the poorest would pay very little. But don’t expect reform soon. Free handouts, however nonsensical, are loved as much by the politicians as by those who receive them.”