Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, Dan Gravell wrote:

John Rowland wrote:

Free bus travel for all under 16? That is a diabolically bad idea...
buses will become unsafe for anyone else, that's if there's room for
anyone else. If they only gave free travel to under-16s who have been
in no trouble with the police or school, that might be an idea.

There are two advantages to me:

1) Stops them going to school/piano lessons or whatever in mummy's car

Surely the kind of mum who drives her kids to school isn't going to send
them on the bus purely because it now costs a quid a day less? They'd have
to mix with all those common people!

2) Encourages ownership of public transport for kids, making for better
treatment of vehicles and a higher likelihood they will use public
transport when they are older.

Interesting. People seem to be assuming that making travel free for kids
will make kids travel more - that there's elasticity in the market. I'd
have thought that demand is already saturated; people _need_ to use the
bus to get around, so they do. Making it free will just make it cheaper
for them.

Unfortunately you're wrong. Adelaide introduced free travel for kids in
1990, but abolished it the following year because things hadn't gone
according to plan. With free buses, kids started using the bus for short
journeys where they'd otherwise have walked.