St Helens: £2 cap for single bus fares set come to an end

Despite a national fare limit increasing the flat rate for a one way journey to £3 earlier this year, Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram retained the lower limit until the end of 2025 across the Liverpool City Region, which includes St Helens.

Mr Rotheram told a radio phone-in how it costs the city region’s Combined Authority (CA) £2m a month to provide the £2 fare across the six local authority areas.

He admitted however, this could not continue forever and confirmed the fares would have to rise “at some point.”

Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram

The Metro Mayor said the CA was doing “everything we can” to extend the price point to keep fares as low as possible for passengers.

In Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first financial statement to the House of Commons last year, she confirmed the limit for a single bus trip would be increased to £3 nationwide.

In response, almost £5m was poured into the Liverpool City Region’s transport budget in a bid to retain the £2 charge cap for single journeys. Introduced in 2022, the £2 limit had been due to expire at the end of last year. In June’s spending review, Ms Reeves confirmed the national £3 scheme would be extended through to March 2027.

The new reduced fare was agreed with bus operators in the Liverpool City Region for an initial three-year period.

It is funded by the £12m Bus Services Improvement Plan (BSIP) allocation, secured by the Mayor and Combined Authority from the Conservative administration.

Bus travel is the most popular form of public transport in the Liverpool City Region, accounting for more than 80 per cent of all journeys made every day.

More than 1.6 million £2 tickets are bought every month.

Speaking on BBC Radio Merseyside, Mr Rotheram said work was ongoing to determine the future of the scheme looking ahead to 2026.

He said: “We haven’t made a decision to tell you the truth at this moment in time but there is a report that goes out tomorrow night to the leaders of the councils.

“We’ve been going through all the financials on this. We’ve seen an uptick in footfall, passenger numbers, with the reduction and so more people are being attracted onto it, which of course then means economically you’re getting more money in because we’re seeing more people using it and more people paying to use it.

“There’s an intersection between where you put your prices up then it starts to be detrimental to the numbers of people using the service.” This summer, the Metro Mayor confirmed the retention of the fee admitting it hadn’t been an easy decision and had entered into discussions with Whitehall on how to keep fees down on Merseyside.

However, it would appear Mr Rotheram has signalled the impending end of the £2 fee.

He said: “We’ve got to find somewhere where we can come to an accommodation because it costs us £2m a month to do the £2 fares as a flat rate and we can’t go on ad infinitum so at some stage they will have to go up.

“I eked it out until the end of this year because most things go up in January but I don’t want this to be seeing this to be blamed on the fact next year we’re going to take the buses back into public control through franchising.

“I don’t want people to see those two things as being correlated, ‘you take the buses back and then you put the fares up.’ We’re doing everything we can to see if we can extend it, even if it is a little bit, because we’ve seen it’s a benefit for the passengers.”