A group of students at City of Bristol College are petitioning council chiefs asking for free travel on the city’s buses for young people - after a commitment to introduce it was watered down to just having ‘reduced fares’.
Hundreds of young people have signed the petition drafted by the students, who have formed a campaign group called My World My Home, to call for improvements to the environment in Bristol.
But free travel for people under 25, or even for students and apprentices older than 16, appears as far away as ever, following the drawing up of a ‘Bus Service Improvement Plan’, which has watered down the commitment to bring it in.
Read more: Council trying to get 16-18 year olds in Bristol free bus travel
Transport campaigners have long called for incentives for young people to use public transport in Bristol, arguing that cheaper or even free fares will help persuade them to get into driving cars when they reach 17, and also will help open up the city’s jobs and apprenticeship opportunities.
The Mayor of Bristol agrees. In Marvin Rees’ Labour manifesto for the May 2021 mayoral election, a pledge to introduce free bus travel for young people was included. Under the ‘transport’ section, the manifesto said: “We will also provide free travel for apprentices and students under 25.”
Now a new petition by student campaigners has been drafted to go to Bristol City Council’s Head of Strategic City Transport, Adam Crowther. The ‘My World My Home’ group of student campaigners from the City of Bristol College said they want ‘everyone to be able to access their city’. They said they had contacted Bristol City Council about this issue, but have not had a response.
The petition said: “Please support their campaign by providing Council bus passes to everyone under the age of 25, and extending the disabled peoples bus passes to 24-hour use (rather than off-peak). Please implement this by the start of the 2022-23 academic year.”
Last year, free bus travel for young people under 21 was a key demand made by Bristol’s School Strike for Climate activists, who have gathered for almost four years, once a month on College Green. “Free bus passes for pensioners and disabled people should be extended to all students and those under 21 in order to ensure equal work, school and social opportunities throughout the city,” the group said.
“Encouraging public transport use will also reduce congestion, improve environmental quality and benefit public health. It offers young people a feasible alternative to owning a car, contributing to reduced congestion and improved air quality, establishes positive lifetime habits of utilising public transport, encourages healthier journeys - bus use often involves a walk or cycle rather than driving door to door - and promotes equal opportunity across the city,” they added.
When elected in 2016, one of Marvin Rees’ manifesto pledges was to introduce a Transport for London-style franchise system for the buses in Bristol - something which is yet to happen.
One issue for the Mayor and Bristol City Council is that public transport is one of the key policy areas that is now under the wider control of the West of England metro mayor Dan Norris, and the WECA combined authority, which comprises the metro mayor and the three councils of Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
Why is free bus travel for young people important?
In 2019, Bristol City Council’s cabinet agreed a paper proposing a ‘strategy’ to introduce free bus travel for all young people aged between 16 and 18 and in education. Back then, cabinet members at City Hall said one of the biggest barriers that stops or discourages 16-year-olds to go on and do A-Levels was the lack of, and cost of, bus transport to get to sixth form colleges around Bristol.
Back in 2018, Bristol Live revealed the huge educational inequalities in Bristol that saw 100 per cent of 18-year-olds in Clifton going to university and only eight per cent of 18-year-olds in Withywood and Hartcliffe going to uni. That was part of research conducted by the University of Bristol to discover why that could be the case, and what could be done.
It discovered massive disparities in access to A-Levels for 16-year-olds leaving school and said this was a huge factor in creating the inequality, with some areas of Bristol effectively post-16 ‘black holes’ where young people have huge challenges in going on to study for A-levels, especially when those coincide with areas of social and economic deprivation and wider inequality.
The Bristol City Council cabinet strategy to introduce free travel for all 16, 17 and 18-year-olds in full-time education could not be enacted, because there was doubt about who would pay for it - and the strategy was forwarded to the West of England Combined Authority.
What the Metro Mayor says
In October and November 2021, the West of England Combined Authority revealed its Bus Service Improvement Plan - a long-term strategy to improve bus services in Bristol and the surrounding area. The plan includes some proposals for reduced fares for young people, but not the free travel for under 25s, under 21s, or even for sixth form college students.
At the moment under 5s travel free on Bristol’s buses, and the plan raises that to any child under 11. Older children between the age of 11 and 18 will get half price discounts, but not the free transport proposed by young campaigners or the Mayor of Bristol.
The plan outlines how much even half-price fares will cost - £10 million between 2022 and 2025. Metro Mayor Dan Norris told Bristol Live he'd love to be able to make bus travel free for young people, but someone would have to pay for it, and there isn't the money available.
“Making public transport the obvious choice is vital if we’re going to meet our ambitious net-zero targets," he said. "I would love to be able to bring in more free and reduced travel for young people but sadly there isn’t an unlimited pot of money. While we have had some big successes bringing money to the region including £105 million for buses - the second highest amount in the country - sadly it’s not nearly enough and the government keep tying up money in red tape, specifying exactly what we can and can’t use the cash for.
"This is coupled with a reduction in income from fares as passenger numbers are still down. What I can do is pledge to aim to spend every penny we have as effectively as possible. I want to make buses more reliable, have tap on tap off, introduce more flat fares and reduce some fares across our bus network.
"Crucially, though, it is the Government which must step up and provide much more comprehensive support than they have previously if we are to build the quality public transport system that all people across our great region need and deserve," he added.
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