A county council abolished all fares on its main rural bus services for a week in a Welsh Assembly experiment to test the link between demand and fares.
The result was that services into Ceredigion’s main employment town of Aberystwyth have been ‘jam-packed’, according to the bus operator.
Another purpose of the experiment was to reduce car traffic into the increasingly-congested town. The assembly expects that bus operators will retain extra business long-term, ‘once new passengers have experienced the efficiency of bus services’. Free transport has been the Holy Grail for campaigners for some time, but it is believed a free-for-all experiment has never been tried before.
While some professionals seriously doubt the value for money of any form of free transport – even for pensioners – operators in Ceredigion were keen. ‘This may be the way we have to go,’ said one. ‘With the fares as they are, car-owners grumble that it is cheaper to go to work by car.’
A local person commuting 15 miles each way said the normal return fare was £5 daily, compared with £10 for a week’s petrol. Ceredigion council expects to receive £25,000 from the assembly to pay for the experiment.
The free buses scheme originated with the council as a way of publicising the new 42-seat vehicles it bought to lease to the operators of its core hourly services running south from Aberystwyth to Cardigan and to Lampeter and Carmarthen.
At first, the assembly in Cardiff rejected the suggestion. But then its members changed their minds, and asked the council to coincide it with a scheduled visit by development and transport minister, ~Andrew Davies~ to Cardigan last week.
An assembly spokesman said: ‘We are testing the elasticity of demand. We want to see the effect of ticket prices on people’s willingness to travel by bus.’ Asked if this could be the first step towards free travel for all, the spokesman said: ‘It is important to gauge the impact, the pattern of use and the cost.’
But a spokesman for the Confederation of Passenger Transport warned: ‘It might be affordable for Ceredigion, but hardly for a city such as Cardiff.’
The Welsh Assembly has been a pioneer in fares action to reverse the decline in bus use. OAP passes, allowing holders to travel free throughout Wales all day introduced in 2002, reversed a long-term decline in patronage.
First minister ~Rhodri Morgan~ said the scheme – more generous than that planned in England for 2008 – was ‘a powerful tool in maintaining the size of the network’. Some main routes in south Wales have seen frequencies doubling due to OAP use.