Removal of Railcard in place of bus pass option - West Sussex

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From the Chichester Observer

The decision to drop a free senior railcard scheme offered as an alternative to a free bus pass in West Sussex has been called-in by Labour councillors.

Like all authorities, West Sussex County Council has a statutory duty to administer the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS^▸ (English National Concessionary Travel Scheme. Bus passes for senior/disabled persons)), providing free off-peak bus travel for eligible older and disabled people.

There is no such legal duty to provide the railcard scheme.

The decision to scrap it would affect 2,000 older people while saving the council around £50,000 per year.

As I understand it, West Sussex County Council has been offering a senior railcard as an alternative to an ENCTS bus pass, and it's been useful to people - especially where there are few buses but a good train service.   Comment is made that a lot more people would have switched to a railcard if they knew about the option.

At £30 per year for the railcard, and payment to the bus operators of (say) £1 per bus journey, it looks like they expect the people deprived of their railcards to make an average of just 5 single bus journeys per year - in other words, they're replacing something that people want and use with sometime that they won't use. Mean madness?

[didcotdean]

Maybe they should consider an option of giving everyone that qualifies an ENCTS^▸ (English National Concessionary Travel Scheme. Bus passes for senior/disabled persons) pass for the buses that also gives a discount of half price on all train journeys within West Sussex and to important towns / cities just outside, such as Brighton and Portsmouth. This model has been used elsewhere for some years.