South Yorkshire’s Mayor Oliver Coppard has recommended that the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority continues to fund the £2 fare cap on trams until the end of June.
He said: “The extension of the £2 fare cap to trams has been hugely popular – we’ve sold more than a million fare capped tickets on tram since we brought it in to match the fare cap on bus.
While the fare cap on buses is now paid for by central government, we fund the tram fare cap ourselves through part of our grant funding and our Cost of Living Fund.
With the extension of the bus £2 fare cap to the end of June, we had difficult decisions to make about whether we can afford to continue funding the cap on tram fares.
Today, working closely with Stagecoach Supertram, I have recommended that the MCA continues to fund the £2 fare cap on trams until the end of June.
Without government support for the £2 cap on tram fares, we’re going to struggle to keep the cap going past the end of June, but I’ll be lobbying government for support to extend the scheme on both our bus and tram network into summer and beyond.”
The Transport and Environment Board of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority will meet on March 30th to consider the recommendation to approve the proposal.
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