Usually two. since they ran from, for instance, Surrey to Essex, through central London. It did not help timekeeping. GreenLine was not to be confused with the, Green, London Country buses which ran in the suburbs and beyond - again of rather long routes, eg Guildford to Croydon.
Local services only. The pensioners' privilege doesn't apply to National Express or the long distance Megabus network, but NatEx have a discount card which can be bought by people over a certain age.
You can use local buses to travel that far, but you'd be town hopping from Carlisle to Penrith to Lancaster to.... (You get the idea). I know of someone who did Birmingham to Norwich for free, but it took him two days each way.
00:02:23 on Thu, 17 Jan 2013, Dave Liquorice remarked:
If it's a bus, yes. Seems rather a long bus route though, sure it's not a Natex Coach service?
But you could probably patch together some other bus routes, some of which can be quite long (eg Manchester-Derby). Start looking for Newcastle-Durham, then Durham-Stockton (and so on).
LAs are free to offer additional concessions over and above the statutory minimum. Generally the most generous are in the metropolitan areas notably London as they are the only ones who get enough money from central government to afford it.
I'd love to know the *actual* cost of the service. Pensioners using buses etc outside rush hour is actually going to cost very little. Unless you assume they'd otherwise be paying the full fare for that journey. In my case I'd possibly go by car if I had to pay the fare.
It costs the local authorities a lot, often more than they get as a grant from government for the project. As for the bus companies, there are reports that the demand does sometimes result in having to run more buses - so it's not always just soaking up un-used capacity.
The latter two are sufficiently short trips it's plain they will have more stops than necessary.
The Trans-peak service has 37 stops listed, plus "every" stop in the Buxton area. As it's about 95km, even without that central section it's better than one stop every 3km.
So all the reports of buses running around near empty outside rush hour ain't true?
The trouble is it's all too easy to base the cost on the number of passenger journeys those with passes make. Finding out the actual costs if they didn't have free travel ain't so easy.
Rather like the NHS. Would every visit to a doctor still happen if they had to be paid for directly? I suspect the waiting rooms would be half empty.
That "cost" is what the LAs have to pay to the bus companies. (Except possibly in London, where the LA runs the buses, and is already paying all the costs in return for getting all the fares).
They do. Round here, it was about 50p per ride last Summer, billed monthly, due to reduce by about a third real soon now, if it hasn't already. Companies are close-mouthed about how many they carry for commercial reasons.
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