Under-22-year-olds get free bus travel now. As of last week, the youth can bomb about fae the Cleppy Road to the Caledonian Canal via Carrbridge and Caithness and no pay a penny for the pleasure.
It is a giddy moment of tremendous liberty.
There’s massive economic opportunity. You can apply for jobs in Glasgow and Ayr, and not worry about the fare down to these places should you get accepted for an interview. Employers can poach staff fae outlying towns.
There are social and romantic implications for free buses for under-22s too.
You can throw open your Tinder radius far beyond the regional boundaries. Match with people well beyond your postcode. So long as there’s a bus stop near your amore, then a fling in far afield Fortrose is open to those fae the Ferry. Hawick loons will be available to Hulltoon lassies.
This is a Good Thing. Capital G, capital T.
But of course I’m no satisfied.
In Estonia, bus travel is free tae aabdy, all across the country on many routes.
In Luxembourg public transport is free across aa the transport routes, including trams and trains.
You might say that’s no hard in Luxembourg, Europe’s weeest nation. Yer granny could hop across it on her pogo stick nae bother.
But Estonia’s a fair size. It’s 90 miles top to bottom and 50 odd miles wide.
Free Bus Travel for everyone under 22 launched earlier this week!
Are you under 22 and don't have your pass yet? Apply today:
👉https://t.co/mQBXSGSJzm pic.twitter.com/nzHtpRkz4A
— Scottish Greens (@scottishgreens) February 4, 2022
That’s a free bus network that covers an area bigger than Aberdeen to Edinburgh and Glasgow, which is about 75% of Scotland’s population.
Surely we cannae think we’re too wee or too poor to follow in the bold Estonia’s footsteps?
Buses run on pensioner power
The advantages of free transport are already clear to see among the over-60s.
With pensions pinched and cost of living ever rising, being able to scoot aboot with no fare to pay keeps older folk mobile.
My old partner was Polish, and she remarked regularly on the vibrancy of the over-60s in Scotland compared to Poland.
At home, she’d say, old people just sit and shiver in their cold flats. They can’t afford to come into the city every day or anything like it.
Here, she’d say, pointing at a Stagecoach full of grey heads whizzing by, old folk are out and about aawye, in the garden centres, in the shops, dotting about meeting pals. It’s unbelievable.
My mum loves her bus pass. She says it’s great for minding the grandchild, as the pair of them can rattle along chatting away, playing eye-spy, getting a blether with other folk on the bus.
Were they in the car, the grandchild would be strapped up in the back, and granny’s attention would be fixed on the traffic in front.
She also uses her pass to travel to volunteer in Edinburgh every week – an unsustainable cost if she had to pay for a ticket every time.
Free buses are young people’s route to freedom
Free mobility for the over-60s is a remarkable social achievement.
I suspect and hope we’ll see the same transformation in the lives of the young.
The extant fares restrict movement.
I mind the hassles of bus travel in my teens and early twenties.
Myself and my brother Chris used to skip onto buses for a half fare as a matter of course.
When that stopped working, into our twenties, we’d maybe just pay to Monifieth but stay on to Carnoustie, saving 85p.
The savings were essential.
If we were completely broke, we’d just not travel.
To skint young folk, free travel might be the difference between sitting in their room deep in a scheme alone, or hopping the bus to toon and meeting their pals.
That’s a huge impact socially, for a very small tax outlay.
So, why not go further?
If free bus travel really does invigorate the lives of older generations, and looks set to open doors for younger folk, what about the rest of us, stuck in the middle ground of our tedious 30s, 40s, 50s?
And why not add trains to the list of things we pay for indirectly instead of at the point of use?
A nationalised train service that’s free for all?
We basically ran the trains along this line for the worst period of the pandemic.
Abellio, the current train operators, were required to keep the trains running despite the fact that hardly a soul was riding them.
We spent nearly 500 million quid running these empty trains, but still charged the very few passengers the full amount.
Weird.
Scotrail will be nationalised soon. This gives us scope to experiment.
🚉 BREAKING: We are putting ScotRail into public ownership from April 2022.
🏴 Transport Minister @JennyGilruth has confirmed that the new operator will be fully owned and controlled by the Scottish Government. pic.twitter.com/qYXcwd1nKr
— The SNP (@theSNP) February 9, 2022
The Scottish Government has pledged to reduce car use by 20%. So let’s make trains free along key commuter routes for a while.
Arbroath-Dundee in the morning and the other way in the evening.
Inverkeithing to Edinburgh free in the morning.
Really make it easy to leave the car at home.
Free bus travel for the under-22s is a great achievement, but let’s keep the momentum moving forward.
If we’re going to own the trains too, we’d be mad not to bring them into Scotland’s free travel experiment.
