Green candidate for Mayor of London, Siân Berry, has pledged to go further than Ken Livingstone’s fares freeze announced today, and cut the cost of travel in London. Siân said that she would cut all bus and off-peak tube fares, and extend the student discount, currently available only for Oyster travelcards, to pay-as-you-go fares as well.
Siân also urged the Mayor to bring forward the integration of Oyster pay-as-you-go with overground networks, which is currently expected to take until 2009.
Siân said: "London is such a expensive place to live. An affordable London is a pipe dream without an affordable public transport network, so clearly freezing fares isn’t enough, especially after the numerous recent fare hikes that have outstripped income. I’d cut bus and off-peak tube fares, on cash and Oyster, and extend the student travelcard discount to include pay-as-you-go.
"Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on the Thames Gateway Bridge, we should be focussing on day-to-day affordability for ordinary Londoners.
"Oyster has been a huge success in making the transport system run more smoothly, but we’ve had it for four years and it’s a disgrace that people from the outer boroughs are still left out. Livingstone needs to pull out all the stops to bring overground services into the Oyster system, not make us wait until 2009."