Opposition councillors are lobbying to keep a £2 bus fare, with the government due to lift the national cap to £3 in the new year.
Green opposition leader Steve Davis plans to bring a motion to a council meeting this week, with support from the Brighton and Hove Independents as well as his own party.
Councillor Davis wants the council to meet bus company bosses to discuss how to keep the £2 bus fare cap – at the lowest possible cost to the public purse.
And he wants a report to explores potential funding streams to support the subsidy including the Carbon Neutral Fund and the Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP).
Last month, Brighton and Hove City Council announced that short bus journeys would be capped at £1 from Sunday 1 December until the end of next month.
The move followed a government announcement in October that the national fare cap would go up to £3 from the new year.
Metropolitan mayors in Manchester and Liverpool have committed to keeping the £2 fare – and Councillor Davis wants to know how much it would cost to do the same in Brighton and Hove.
He is also calling on Labour council leader Bella Sankey to write to the government expressing the council’s disappointment at the end of the £2 cap and asking ministers to reverse the decision.
Councillor Davis said that the £2 fare cap had significant benefits, “making public transport more accessible and affordable for many, especially those on lower incomes”.
He said: “Accessible and affordable public transport is vital to achieving the city’s carbon neutrality goals by 2030 and encouraging sustainable travel behaviours.
“The removal of the cap is likely to disproportionately impact residents from poorer backgrounds, exacerbating social inequalities.
“The removal of the £2 bus cap is likely to reduce the total of number of people travelling by bus, having an impact on the income of local bus companies.
“Ultimately the responsibility of funding the £2 bus cap in the long term should lie with the national government.”
Brighton and Hove Independent councillor Mark Earthey, who is expected to second motion, said that he wanted to bus fares to be as low as possible without coming out of the council’s budget.
Councillor Earthey, who represents Rottingdean and West Saltdean, said: “The last thing we want is for the city to be choked with even more cars.
“From a selfish point of view, the A259 runs through our ward, so we would rather have full buses than even bigger queues of cars at our ward’s major junctions.
“However, we are keener that national government picks up the tab, not the council. We have been given to understand that the cost to the council of maintaining the £2 cap would be around £14 million per year.
“This would have to be taken from frontline services – a move which the Brighton and Hove Independent group finds totally unacceptable.”
The full council meeting is due to start at 4.30pm on Thursday (19 December) at Hove Town Hall. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
Yet more nonsense from someone who hasn’t got a clue.
The bus in Brighton is £5 a day. Because a £2 cap means only 2 singles so the moment you need to use a 3rd bus you’d be spending £6 making the day ticket cheaper.
Instead of blowing tax income on this, it would be better spent on a better bus service, i.e extending the 28/29 into Hove