Comments on: Fare Fight? https://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/articles/news/fare-fight/ The Hastings & St Leonards non-profit community newspaper Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:38:33 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3 By: Anna Sabin https://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/articles/news/fare-fight/#comment-44550 Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:38:33 +0000 https://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/?p=33646#comment-44550 Fares go up and services go down if not enough people ride the buses. Government subsidy is supposed to kick that trend in the other direction. But, if the subsidy isn’t spent on permanent infrastructure, mostly bus lanes – worthwhile ones that are continuous throughout most of a bus route – then buses stay stuck in traffic and anyone with a choice chooses to go by car.
Potential bus riders, the ones with choice who still aren’t riding, need better walking conditions on the way to better bus stops. Then getting in the car for a journey would have a bit of competition. 
Were the centre of town to have been transformed into a Garden, as Hastings Town Board intended, seamlessly connected to the beach with a perfect-for-walkers crossing from Harold Place to the sea, then more people would come to town by bus to walk…and shop and eat. But Stagecoach think it’s a win to be allowed to carry on driving through the middle of it up and down Harold Place and Havelock Road. It means there’ll be no walkers’ paradise and you might well drive on right past it.
Is East Sussex County Council leading Stagecoach astray? Its previous huge £41.1m award before this latest £16.5m allocation, was spent on capping bus fares, experimenting with on demand rural bus services which worked as bus-shaped taxis, some (thankfully permanent) bus priority traffic lights and £11.1m on widening Exeat Bridge into the Seven Sisters National Park – to ‘unlock’ the road for motor traffic. Again, if the intention of the funding was to increase use of public transport and decrease use of private cars, it has not been properly spent.

Having private car ownership as the best and most government-subsidised transport option is wildly expensive for tax payers and for car owners and it makes travel and the environment horrible for everyone else. So this misappropriation of funds matters. It’s not what the Government intends. Why award more than £16.5m to a transport authority which drives recklessly over its remit to invest in healthy walking and bus riding?

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