SWANSEA: MP launches petition for £2 bus fares to match England’s new cap

Swansea West’s MP has launched a petition calling on the Welsh Government to cap bus fares at £2 a journey, claiming a Swansea commuter could save up to £572 a year.

Torsten Bell launched the petition at Swansea Market on Friday, with signatures being gathered online through his website.

The Labour MP’s move follows Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s announcement that single bus fares in England will be capped at £2 from January 2027, replacing the current £3 cap.

That scheme comes backed by £454m of funding which, crucially for Bell’s argument, includes money to allow devolved governments to take similar action.

“Affordable buses are vital in Swansea,” Bell said. “They bring footfall to our city centre, while connecting people with jobs, appointments and friends.

“I’m glad that bus fares will be capped at £2 in England, but with the Welsh Government dragging their feet the danger is that we see Swansea families being disadvantaged rather than getting the same respite from the cost of living.”

The £572 figure is the MP’s office’s own calculation, based on First Cymru’s £3.10 single fare in Swansea: a full-time commuter paying two singles a day could spend £1,612 a year, against £1,040 under a £2 cap.

Transport is devolved, so England’s cap will not apply to any journey in Wales, and most bus passengers aged 22 to 59 here are covered by no fare cap at all.

Swansea has its own softener. The council’s free weekend buses return every school holiday, a scheme now in its sixth summer with more than a million journeys made since 2021, though it covers weekends and holidays rather than the daily commute Bell’s cap is aimed at.

“Wales is leading the way”, says the Welsh Government

The Welsh Government has resisted calls to follow England. Responding when the England cap was announced, it said: “Wales is leading the way on affordable, accessible public transport.”

It points to the £1 single fares already in place for five to 21-year-olds across Wales, free bus travel for over-60s and disabled people, and plans for a new coach service linking north and south Wales.

Plaid Cymru’s Senedd election pledge took a different route from a universal cap: continuing the £1 youth scheme and concessionary passes while rolling out tap-on, tap-off ticketing and daily fare caps across bus and rail.

Bell’s call echoes one made inside Wales two weeks ago, when Welsh Labour leader Ken Skates urged the Welsh Government to introduce a cap, saying people in Wales would otherwise be “left paying more for bus travel than our neighbours across the border”. A £2 adult cap was in Welsh Labour’s Senedd manifesto before May’s election defeat.

Bell has been here before. He backed the £2 pledge in January, when Welsh Labour wrote it into its manifesto, arguing then that bus travel was “too expensive for too many people”.

The argument lands as Wales prepares the biggest shake-up of its buses in decades, with services being brought under public control through franchising, starting in south west Wales.

On the MP’s arithmetic, the same length of journey could cost £1.10 less on the other side of the border from January. Whether that difference stands is now the Welsh Government’s call.