Stagecoach are now offering a 50% discount on bus fares for job seekers who get a discount card from the Job Centre.
This is a welcome move, though I fear it will not be as much help as one might hope.
Bus routes for the most part still follow the traditional hub & spoke pattern, taking people from the outskirts, where they lived, into the town, where all the jobs were. But these days employment is increasingly to be found on the outskirts, making orbital travel more necessary.
There is also the problem of – outside London – bus services being much reduced after 6pm, which only adds to the difficulties in these flexible working days. Those who live on council estates are particularly poorly served, since these are often on the road to nowhere else. Restrictions on housing benefit & the disappearance of cheap lodgings probably make it impossible to think of moving to live near your work. Those same factors militate against the idea of moving to areas more plentifully supplied with jobs too.
Since I have been in a position to observe the determination of job seekers using the library facilities I have often thought that a smart phone & a means of personal transport would make all the difference to their efforts. The first ought to be easy enough, but the second is really problematic. Gone are the days when a young man could pick up an old banger for a song & do a fair amount of the maintenance himself – MOT & the cost of insurance, plus the lack of garage space make that a pipe dream for most. Cycling is not an attractive proposition because of the hills, & impossible in snow & ice. Even safe places to store a motor cycle or scooter are rare.
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