‘Risk of fraud from poorly considered change to fares’

‘Risk of fraud from poorly considered change to fares’

Kevin Hart made the comments this week, adding that he did not think it was right that passengers would be able to travel between the east and west coasts of the Island for £2.

The change follows a proposition, lodged by Deputy Montfort Tadier, which was this week passed by States Members by 22 votes to 17.

‘We need to talk to government about what it means and how we are going to change things. The potential for fraud could be huge. If you bought a through-ticket but got off halfway, you could give it to someone else and they could use it to get their journey for free,’ Mr Hart said.

‘We have now got to look at how we can do this. It is not as straight-forward as some politicians would like to think.

‘In fairness to [Infrastructure Minister] Kevin Lewis, he has highlighted that this is not States revenue they are playing with. They are interfering with a commercial contract. I do not think enough thought has gone into it from the politicians’ side.’

Mr Hart added that he thought the taxi industry could be undermined by the introduction of the cheap fares at a time when business was already down.

‘If you are going from Georgetown to First Tower, I can understand. But to be able to go from Gorey to L’Etacq for £2 – I think there needs to be a sense of realism,’ he said. ‘I think it will also have a damning effect on the taxi industry. If there are four people going home to Gorey after a night out in St Aubin, it sometimes makes sense to split the cost between the four people. But, after these changes come in, the price of a bus fare will have halved.

‘This is happening in January so we have not got long to think about how this will work and how it can be implemented. We will be meeting the Infrastructure, Housing and Environment Department over the next few days to discuss this at length, I am sure.’

Mr Hart, who has been overseeing LibertyBus’ operations in Jersey since they took over from Connex in 2013, added that new flexible working arrangements had impacted the business.

‘We are currently trading at about 65% of our usual winter trade and we would have hoped we would have been back at about 75% by now,’ he said.

‘What was really interesting was that on Friday last week we saw a 2,000 passenger reduction compared to the Friday the week before. That was because people looked out of the window in the morning, saw how terrible the weather was and decided to work from home.

‘That flexibility is having a massive impact on our business and, from speaking to other business esin St Helier that rely on those people, they said they had noticed the exact same trend – it was absolutely desolate in town.’

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