Payment per passenger would kill rural buses

In the last issue of Transit CfIT’s Helen Holland argued the case for reforming the Bus Service Operators’ Grant on the basis of passenger numbers. However, Stephen Morris of Bus Users UK argues this would ultimately be destructive

The Commission for Integrated Transport is misguided if it thinks that rural bus services will not be hit by the implementation of BSOG payment on the basis of patronage

Stephen Morris has written about bus issues and produced various bus-related publications for nearly 30 years. He is now external relations officer for Bus Users UK with a wide-ranging brief, ranging from production of their magazine, Bus User, to liaison with government and Passenger Focus

Stephen Morris

There have been a number of weird and wacky schemes to reform BSOG (Bus Service Operators’ Grant) in recent years. There are certain incentives which have been proposed that we at Bus Users UK would welcome: incentives, for instance, to expand smartcard use and to extend the provision of real-time information systems. We would argue for incentivising either of those aspirations, with the provisos that we would like to see smartcards working as rapidly as Oystercard, which not all systems...

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