Ring and Ride fare increase branded 'unpleasant financial reality'

Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) has put forward a proposed 70p increase for users which will see a single trip rise from the current £1.30 to £2 from January 2025.

Increases in costs of fuel and staffing are among the reasons given for what would be the first rise in Ring and Ride fares since 2017.

The issue was discussed at a West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Transport Delivery Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting where some concerns were raised about the impact this would have on users.

Members agreed to ask the WMCA Board, which is due to vote on the increase later this month, to defer the decision to enable them to further assess how people would be affected.

Ring and Ride provides door-to-door travel for people who find it difficult to access other modes of public transport.

The authority provides a subsidy of £6.467 million per year to run the service but this is a much less than in 2010/11 when its budget was around £12m.

Fares for the West Midlands On Demand service, which is run in Coventry, are also being reviewed by the authority.

Jon Hayes, TfWM’s head of bus, said: “Essentially, like all other transport services in the region and nationally, Ring and Ride has seen a significant increase in costs due to inflationary increases around fuel, staffing, engineering costs and also recent improvements in the vehicle fleet required due to unreliability of existing services.

“These costs have largely been covered by ourselves up until now, however we need to address the rebalance between the subsidy we currently pay – which is around £26 per trip – and the fare currently paid by passengers on Ring and Ride and also West Midlands on Demand service in Coventry.

“TfWM retain the fare revenue on this service and that’s unlike other services we provide through subsidy.

“So we can say any money that is generated through the proposed fare increase will come back to TfWM to offset the costs of the provision of the service.

“Fares have not gone up on the Ring and Ride service sine 2017 so it’s a significant period which is completely different to bus and rail fares which have that annual increase.

“The fare changes we are proposing are broadly in line with what inflation would have been over that period and still remain measurable to similar services which operate in other parts of the country.”

Committee member Councillor Liz Clements said: “Ring and Ride is a really important service and I get quite a lot of casework about it.

“I think a really key thing is we are operating it with 50 per cent less funding than we were a decade ago so having to look at the fares is simply an unpleasant financial reality of the situation we’re in.

“I think an increase from £1.30 to £2 is significant – that’s a 53 per cent increase  – which is going to hit some people but if it hasn’t gone up since 2017 I can understand the explanation.”