UK

Don’t reduce fare-free travel – expand it

JUNE 22, 2025

Free public transport should be extended, not scrapped, Fare Free London said today, in response to a newspaper campaign against free travel for the over-60s.

The Telegraph, Daily Mirror and MyLondon all published stories last week, reporting sympathetically claims that free passes for the over-60s are “unsustainable”. The Daily Mail highlighted “critics” who said the passes are “difficult” to justify.

Simon Pirani of Fare Free London said: “The idea that there is a small pot of money to fund free public transport, and that it is running out, is nonsense. There is no reason why public transport should be funded from the fares that people pay. It can be funded from general taxation. In most of the world’s big cities, fares make up a much smaller share of the money used to pay for the system than they do in London.

“Public transport is already free in Luxemburg, Tallinn (the capital of Estonia), Montpellier and other European towns and cities. And in more than 130 municipalities in Brazil and a good few in the United States, too.”

Fare Free London says taxes on wealth and property could fund free public transport and other public services. Development rights around stations (used in Hong Kong), land value capture, and progressive taxes on companies (used in France) are some obvious ideas.

The Telegraph, Mirror and Mail feign horror that £135 million a year is spent on the 60+ Oyster Card, and £350 million/year on the Freedom Pass in London. But a consistent approach to taxing wealth, and clamping down on corporate tax evasion, would raise billions, not millions.

The Telegraph, Mirror, Mail and MyLondon repeated unsourced, and apparently erroneous, figures, to claim that over-60s passes are mostly used by employees earning “nearly double” what their colleagues in their early 20s earn (£42,000 a year, compared to £24,000 a year).

“We do not recognise these figures,” Pirani said. “Over-60s in full-time jobs in London earn on average 14% more than their colleagues in their 20s, not ‘nearly double’.” In its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2024, the Office for National Statistics estimated median gross annual pay for employees in full-time jobs in London was £37,607 for those aged 22-29, and £42,886 for those over 60 – 14% higher. Median gross hourly pay for all employees was £18.45 for those aged 22-29, and £20.00 for those over 60 – 8.5% higher. 

Pirani added: “Why are these newspapers trying to turn one section of working people against the other? And what about the millions of Londoners, of all ages, who are not in full-time work and struggle to pay their fares? What about the low-income families for whom it is a burden second only to paying the rent?”

Fare Free London also wonder how these stories, with whole paragraphs worded identically, ended up in four newspapers. One clue, perhaps, is that they all quote the Institute for Economic Affairs, the extreme right-wing think tank.

The ‘free market’ dogmatists at the Institute advocate privatising the National Health Service, support zero-hours contracts, oppose most business regulation and support offshore tax havens for the rich. So it is no surprise that they are targeting the benefits of public transport as a public service.

More information at farefreelondon.org.

Image: 1967 Stock train at Finsbury Park in 2010. Creator: Tom Page  Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic