On 18 Sep, 21:00, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:08:38 -0700 (PDT), MIG

wrote:
On 18 Sep, 14:40, Walter Briscoe wrote:
In message of Fri, 18
Sep 2009 07:48:49 in uk.transport.london,
writes

[snip]

You young people won't remember Fares Fair in 1981/2. Fares were cut to
10/20/30/40p for 1 to 4 zones. Even after the court challenge and the
subsequent increase to 20/40/60/80p they were cheaper than they had been
before for most journeys.

Yes I do remember - I have the leaflet sitting on a shelf beside the PC.

I have just failed to find a URL describing Fares Fair in detail.
I DO remember even cheaper Sunday fares from Zone 1E to Epping Forest.

Sunday fares inside Greater London were 20p flat fare. All fares on
sections outside Greater London actually increased when Fares Fair
commenced.

What was the name of the later scheme to cut the fares that came a
year or two after Fares Fair?

"Just the ticket" was what it was called and it started on 4 October
1983. It also launched Travelcard and the full zonal system. I have the
leaflet for that too!

Ah yes of course. I should have remembered that.



I don't know how that was funded.

Nor do I. My guess is that some subsidy was added but it was the
creation of Travelcard that caused a huge boost to sales and usage. The
growth was so strong that any reduction in single fares only required a
short term fillip from subsidy. Moving towards a much simpler system
also reduced costs by shifting transactions towards seasons thus
reducing cash transactions on bus and allowing more automation on LUL.
The increase in pre-purchased tickets also allowed a further push
towards one man operation on the bus network. The introduction of UTS
also reduced the need for manual ticket inspection on LUL in the central
area and allowed more machine based transactions.
--
Paul C

On the face of it, it looks ironic that the onboard self-service
ticket machines disappeared for good around the same time. But of
course, it isn't really, because it wasn't equivalent to ticket
machines at LU stations. The idea of a queue of people, while the bus
waits, feeding exact coins into a machine that took up the space of a
few seats never made much sense to me, but the real change was the
advance purchase of various passes.

The "Red Bus Rover" wasn't available in shops I don't think, but the
early 1980s scratch-off bus pass was.