Greener Jobs Alliance is a supporter of Fare Free London, a community based campaign for free public transport in London.  They have just issued the following statement to the House of Commons Transport Committee and to Transport Minister Heidi Alexander, which GJA has signed up to.

The undersigned organisations welcome the House of Commons Transport Committee’s call for a pilot scheme providing free all-day bus travel to under-22s – and we call for a more wide-ranging study on the potential for universal free travel on all types of public transport.

The committee states that access to free travel would help to remove “barriers to education, training and employment for the next generation”, but it is not only the young who experience these barriers. The burden borne by millions of households due the high fares as well as to the deterioration of bus services over the past decade is well documented.

High fares and poor public transport services exacerbate social inequality, and obstruct progress away from car-centred transport systems – and not only on buses. Trains, including the underground, add to the problem.

With regard to buses, the Transport Committee is calling for a change in the way that funding is provided. We believe that that change should be applied to public transport as a whole.  

We call for the Committee and the government to consider the potential of universal free public transport, which has been successfully introduced in a range of European cities, including the capitals of Luxembourg, Estonia and Serbia, and more than 130 cities in Brazil.

Fare Free London

Fare Free Yorkshire

Get Glasgow Moving

Greener Jobs Alliance

Tipping Point UK

Unite Community, Leeds, Wakefield and York branch

For more information, see the Fare Free London Website here: Fare Free London