Green Party promises 10% fare cuts

Plans for an average 10% cut in bus and rail fares have been announced by the Green Party. The proposals are to be included in its 2015 general election manifesto. It envisages this will be paid for by increasing public investment in fares by £1.8bn a year. The £9bn investment over the course of the next parliament would be met by scrapping most of the Government’s £15bn new road building programme. The announcement came on the day when local Green parties joined RMT, Action for Rail, Compass and People’s Assembly protests against what it described as the ‘failed privatised rail system’. They backed Green MP Caroline Lucas’s Railways Bill that would bring services back into public hands.

Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett, said, ‘The Green Party believes that public services should be run in the interests of those that use them, not the minority who happen to own them. This investment of £1.8bn would offer an enormous help to Britons as they travel between communities, to work, to meet up with friends and relatives, and would help us relieve the national reliance on carbon intensive forms of transport. The £9bn investment would be paid for by scrapping most of this government’s indefensible £15 billion road building programme, leaving £6bn for further transport programmes.’

Visit http://greenparty.org.uk/files/Transport%20fares%20briefing%20FINAL.pdf for more details of the proposals.