Gary Freeman, Nottingham Socialist Party
Des Conway – a leading Save Free Tram Travel activist – said about our successful lobby of the county council cabinet meeting: “We repeated our central demand, that Nottinghamshire County Council drop its heartless plan… to scrap free tram travel for those with a concessionary travel pass.”
In May, there will be a mayor of the new combined authority for Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby and Derbyshire. The mayor will eventually have funds and powers to control buses and trams across the new authority.
Unbelievably, Ben Bradley – a local Tory MP and also leader of Nottinghamshire County Council – says, if elected, he will “make the tram network financially viable and more integrated with other local services”. Yet he leads the council that has been trying to end free tram travel!
The Labour candidate for the mayoral post, Claire Ward, refused to commit to funding free tram travel in the first year, if elected this May. Her justification was that the money for concessionary fares is not transferring to the new authority in year one. However, the cost of the free tram travel is £900,000, and the new mayor is supposed to have a £1.5 billion budget to spend on local transport infrastructure.
Neither Ben Bradley, nor the cabinet member for transport, Neil Clarke, came to accept our 1,000+ signature petition.
Even service-cutting Nottingham City Council (see ‘Nottingham Labour plans cuts on scale we’ve not seen’), has pledged to keep free tram travel for concessionary pass holders for now. So we see absolutely no reason why the 154,000 affected people in the county should not keep our free tram travel.
We’ll be at the mayoral hustings on 21 February to put them all on the spot.
Breaking news – victory!
Ben Bradley, Tory MP and council leader, now says: “We have never had a proposal to scrap free tram travel. We have had a consultation on options, one of which was ‘no change to concessions’. Again, there are no plans for the county to cut concessions, because it is now apparent that this responsibility will pass to the regional mayor.”
Despite what he says, this is a victory.
