Commuter rebates for home workers could save a zone 6 traveller £350 a year

Posted by GLA Conservatives in Blog   Share2013

Mar
7

Roger Evans, London Assembly Member, welcomes the Mayor’s decision to consider flexible ticketing but insists this should be combined with commuter rebates in order to help London’s commuters make significant savings.

“The Mayor’s decision to seriously consider introducing flexible Travelcards is a big step in the right direction. It will mean millions of Londoners have the option of, for example, buying a three-day per week Travelcard. This would make part-time working more affordable for commuters and should encourage those who are able to work from home to do so more often.

“However, the Mayor and TfL should go a step further and combine flexible ticketing with commuter rebates. It would mean that workers could pay for their season ticket and then receive a rebate for every day that they choose not to travel. This has the potential to make significant savings for Londoners. If we start from the assumption that a full-time worker buying an annual season ticket would expect to work 225 days per year, then a Zone 6 commuter pays approximately £9.88 per day for their travel ticket. If a rebate was set at somewhere between £5 and £7 per day, a commuter who worked from home for 50 of those days could expect to receive a rebate of between £250 and £350.”

The report launched by Roger Evans – ‘Home Works: Why London needs to expand home working’ – calls for a step-change in TfL’s attitude to home working and flexible working.

“The average Londoner faces a commute of 37.8 minutes each way every day, adding up to 277 hours per year travelling to and from work. Every Monday, there are over 3.4 million journeys on the London Underground and over 6 million on London’s buses. Even with Tube upgrades, the building of Crossrail and introducing more carriages on many mainline trains, the rise in London’s population is leading to ever more overcrowding on public transport. Clearly London needs transport investment, but TfL and the Mayor should also be focussing on what they can do to incentivise home working.”