West Mids bus strategy left a bigger legacy than S Yorks

Peter White, Professor emeritus of public transport systems, University of Westminster, London

01 April 2016

Peter White says the ticketing initiatives of the West Midlands PTE in the 1970s have had a more lasting legacy on the bus industry than the cheap fare policies of South Yorkshire

Phil Goodwin (‘Long-forgotten ideas: free buses’ LTT 18 Mar) recalls the experience of the low fares in South Yorkshire in the 1970s and early 1980s, which provided a more favourable patronage trend than for PTE bus services as a whole at that time, and might eventually have led to free travel given the ever-lower proportion of costs covered from revenue. As he notes, longer-term implications included effects on the travel behaviour of young people.

One must, however, question how...