Title: Fares Fair - Wikipedia
Headings: Fares Fair
Fares Fair
Contents
Background
Initiation
Legal challenge
Legacy
Notes
References
Bibliography

Content: Alternately, if a council spent more than its GRE, the local ratepayers would have to pay an increasing percentage of the financial burden. This, he hoped, would influence local authorities to keep their spending at the GRE. Initiation
Labour's 1981 GLC manifesto commitment was to subsidise fares on all London Buses, London Underground and British Rail services in Greater London. This would cause a reduction in fares of approximately a third and cause a corresponding increase in the transport costs of the GLC. The funding for the change was planned to come from a 5% increase in local government rates. The subsidy to British Rail was blocked by central government, which restricted the policy to the buses and the London Underground. Because the rate demand for 1981 had already been issued some seven months earlier, the GLC attempted to raise the funding for the scheme up until April 1982 by issuing a supplementary rate demand for the extra money. This had the unintended consequence that it gave London ratepayers full visibility of how much the scheme was costing them. Once the fares fair scheme was up and running, people travelling around London enjoyed fare reductions of about one third on buses and the London Underground, though the better off rate payers were expected to pay more than the savings in extra rates. This was as the GLC council intended, the better off subsidising the transport costs of the poorer residents of London.