(18 Oct 2018, 9:41 pm)James101 wrote Councillor Tett sums up up succinctly. Councils are forced to provide free travel via ENCTS yet are in no way obliged to provide the service in the first place. There’s only one way it could have ever ended, marginal socially necessary services are withdrawn hand over fist.

ENCTS is a failed system. 


The various figures online point to around 1bn ENCTS journeys being made annually just in England. If every journey was surcharged by £1 (payable by the passenger, kept by the local authority by way of deducting said £1 fares from bus company’s ENCTS reimbursement total) there would be an awful lot more money to keep services operating in the first place.

Or, companies just take a little bit of a hit. 
I'm a supporter of ENCTS passes. I think it has a bigger social impact than many other schemes and assists in many more ways than helping Ethel get down to the post office to collect her pension. 
It opens up many opportunities to health care for example.


It is a perk of paying in to the system for so long. Where else do you draw the line? Cut pensions to pay for the NHS? 
Of course there will be some who take advantage of the system. 
It is up to operators to manage their services in a manner that not only works for their shareholders, but ordinary passengers and the taxpayer too. 

For years, we have seen operators work tendered services, because they're apparently not economically viable. Yet when said operator loses the contract to a rival, it suddenly becomes viable and they operate it commercially.
How much money has been wasted over the years on those contracts? Where is the furore about that? How many other services could have been saved as a result of it being operated commercially in the 2/3 years prior?