Now here’s some British politics we could really get behind… Green mayoral candidate, Sian Berry is proposing abolishing fare zones across London and eventually bringing in a single flat fare across the capital. Just a few days ago, we were all in a tizz about the redrawing of the tube map, which meant that areas of zone 3 will now only have to pay zone 2 fares when they travel…but this latest possibility? It’s almost too much for us to handle!
At the moment someone living in zone 6 pays £844 more a year to travel to the centre of London than someone living in zone 3 – that’s assuming they can even afford to pay for the annual travel card upfront anyway! When the impenetrable cost of renting in the centre of London is pushing the least-paid out to the edges, this hardly seems fair…
Sound too good to be true? Let’s just say magic like this simply can’t happen over night. The plan would be implemented in stages: in 2017, zone 4 would merge with zone 3, and zone 6 with zone 5. Over the next eight years, outer London fares would be held down as inner London fares rise to meet them. By around 2025, the party believes it would be able to make London one fare zone.
So what do you think? Do you back the Greens?