dangerously random ceasing to function by old bus passes

In bus pass renewals, there has continued for years, I found out last time round, an extremely dangerous system for all vulnerable passholder groups. After the renewal application goes in, you don't know in how many days your old pass will stop working, it's supposed to be a few, but happens without any check or confirmation on whether your new pass actually has arrived. Because folks are not alerted to this either, they can be using their old pass in good faith, far from home, when suddenly at any time of day it stops working.

This happened to me, randomly late afternoon in Leith, in my last renewal 3 years ago. That is why at this renewal, to fight this system and not accept this danger I have only put the application in at last minute before my pass expires, meaning I will take some days perhaps a week without a pass. In fact, I was lucky to find out that the council's "One Edinburgh" office, who issue the passes, closes at 3:00 on Fridays, and a decent hub library who would do the renewal by emailing them after that hour. So that it will not yet be seen or acted on during the weekend, hence should not affect my pass until after its expiry. It has still worked this morning - posting this on the bus in for today's ELAS.

Both Transport Scotland and the One Edinburgh office deny any power or say over when old passes stop working, nor do they say or appear to even know exactly who does work it, who there ethically should be public contact details for. According to that council office, the system is even worse now. They are now saying, that from as soon as the application is made, the old pass can stop working at unpredictably any time, and they have encountered cases where it happened immediately. This hammered in with insultingly excessive repeatings of the word "unfortunately" to pass buck and deny having any control over it. But this is while the MyGov site at mygov.scot/disabled-bus-pass/replace still says it takes a few days.

So instead of asserting a worse position than is MyGov's public info, this council office can, and ethically should, hold Transport Scotland or MyGov to that info to be accurate: contest the present unpredictability, on passholders' behalf, and tell passholders also who exactly to challenge as responsible for it. Lobbied to councillor on the transport committee.

Maurice Frank
31 May 2025

Jun 14 -
Councillor Kevin Lang, Almond ward, fine achievement to obtain this more definite info on deactivating old passes 7 days from a renewal application. This is One Edinburgh's answer to him -

NEC bus passes when renewed or replaced trigger de-activation of existing cards as a matter of course. However the timescales vary.

Lost or stolen cards and "hot-listed" as soon as possible after report.

Bus passes that are due to expire and need renewal, are either de-activated 7 days after a new card has been ordered or sooner if the expiry date printed on the card is within the 7 days. New bus passes can take up to 7 days to arrive, but most are delivered within two to three working days after application.

If a cardholder gets in touch about 7- 10 days before the current card expires with the relevant documentation to prove continued eligibility they should not be without free bus during the renewal process.

Bus passes may stop working if they become faulty, this can happen at any time, including during the renewal process.Human error can happen, so for instance if a card requiring renewal was incorrectly recorded as lost, it would cease to work as noted above.

The National Entitlement Card Programme Office in Dundee (NECPO) oversees the issuing authorities on behalf of Transport Scotland. NECPO may be the undisclosed agency referred to. NECPO have a feed back form and information about how to make a formal complaint at https://www.nec.scot/contact

Citylink's latest shocking consumer standard

CITYLINK has already been a problem for us. The grassroots compilation book by ANS (Autism Network Scotland) that we took part in, An Ordinary Life Too (PDF book link), which became a guide document for the autism strategy, contained an item on Citylink's arrogant period of unilaterally seizing bus passes when they did not work. Giving up the pass is supposed to be a choice, with paying the fare or not travelling on that bus being other choices: yet stories came from No 6 of folks having their passes arrogantly retained by Citylink, then the replacements taking to come in the week validity of the temporary paper one, resulting in the unjustly unplanned cost of days without a pass. We exposed that.

Now look at this, as written to the Transport department. So Citylink now is not even operating with consumer honesty towards folks who book seats in advance, from smaller stops: actually not honouring their travel. So that it can't be used to travel to anything important that is at all time-critical !!

Oct 14 - Most of the Citylink coach routes are a core part of transport, not a fringe part that could be done without, but one of the essentials joining it up. Keeping them in functional existence therefore is an innate part of transport policy, and transport policy would not exist if that was simply left to the operator as a private sector company. If the operation ceases to be to a consumer trustable standard that folks travelling to important things can rely on, then it is a transport policy public matter to arrange that the services are operated by someone else who will follow a consumer trustable standard. That intervention is part of having a transport policy at all.

When folks travel to Glasgow to take part in the work of an organisation like the Autism Network Scotland or any consulting or researching types of work towards social wellbeing or making findings to influence policy, then the transport's reliabliity affects the doing of that work, for all of the sectors of society it concerns. That gets damaged if transport functions without consumer reliability. That combined with how, in work like ANS's on the autism strategy, transport's consumer reliability is one of the topics it includes. Any piece of transport as infrastructurally key as the Citylink routes are, has its reliable existence in any form be an issue of this impacting nature. When a private sector operator abandons consumer reliability, intervention to replace that operator's services becomes a necessity, towards economic functioning, public sector work as described, and public policy.

If what a Citylink driver said on Oct 12 was right, that drivers are ever simply not informed of prereserved bookings by passengers from internediate stops, not informed to prevent a coach from becoming full before if reaches a prebooked passenger and being unable to pick up that passenger, then such a practice places you in that position. According to that driver it applies to stops on the 900 route, Baillieston being the one where it happened. But if it applies there, how much of Citylink's network does it apply to? and can prebooked pick-ups at remote Highland locations where it would be dangerous if not, be relied on safely? Even on the 900, if prebookings are open to dishonouring and fullness can happen, then rightly timed attendance at important occasions, such as impact on public work, ceases to be possible for attenders to plan.

It happened on the 1015 900 from Glasgow. It was full right from starting point. As a result, if no prebookings were known of it was pointless that it still drove via Baillieston, but it did, and found 3 folks there who had prebooked places on this coach, which the driver was now telling them, was full and they could not board.

The driver was fully on their side that they were suffering a wrong: there is nothing against him. But the position he described to them was shocking. That drivers are not told of passenger bookings at its intermediate stops, and can't know to keep seats for them!! Which makes the bookings a consumer falsehood. Those folks had a need to travel at that time, that was why they had booked. That was the product they had bought and relied on honouring of.

My absence from the coach would not have helped a group of 3, but would have helped a passenger who it could not take at Buchanan. As I was travelling to the "Ratho station" stop (to change to a local bus there), there were 2 simultaneous coaches departing at 1015 and I could have been on the AIR instead. As it had a lot of space on it, clearly I should have been on it, instead of occupying another seat on a full 900. When I arrived at Buchanan I actually did board the AIR first. Its driver should have said they were equally good to catch, and taken me. But instead, he told me the 900 was quicker.

If that happens again, I will know from this experience to argue against it. But as I live in the east, it is rare to travel eastward in the morning, so I had no experience to forsee the 900 being full. So I was on the 900 only because I was directed so by the AIR's driver, directing me off a spacious coach and onto a near-full one to other passengers' detriment! Quickness is trivial in that context even if he had been right. In fact he was also wrong about that, as the 900 was the second coach to depart and the incident with the betrayed passengers at Baillieston itself cost all speed advantage over the AIR's detour at Eurocentral, so this 900 was not quicker. I should have been on the AIR by absolutely any argument. The fullness that hit the Baillieston passengers had been contributed to by wrong organising of passengers!

With this of course also complained to Citylink: how does Citylink tell you, and me and those passengers conned by worthless reservations, committally not noncommittally that it is fit to continue to be the trunk route coach operator?

travel injustice could not happen if we were getting listened to properly

News story from the Independent and Yahoo news:

uk.yahoo.com/news/man-hundreds-docked-wages-apos-154002072.html Man has hundreds docked from wages for boarding train without ticket, despite being in wrong city at the time.

Not an autism story, this is an ordinary person. BUT - this scenario could not happen at all, to ordinary folks, to anyone, if something arising from autism, that I have been raising ever since the noughties, had been acted on. Something that Scottish Autism meaninglessly stated only that it "noted".

That all carrying of physical documents to prove your entitlement when you travel around, is a disability discrimination, because it treats unequally all medical minority groups who have a greater than equal likelihood to lose the document by human error. This includes dyspraxics, and autistics by our condition's effect on fine motor skills and link to dyspraxia. Those medical words mean, our coordination in handling small objects is less than equally good.

If this item is acted on on the principle that discrimination items can never be ignored and that answering minority groups' needs is never a selective choice -principles that the system is only functioning honestly if it follows - then it abolishes tickets. Passes, the identity cards that New Labour wanted: it does away with all physically carried proving of entitlement to mover around.

It abolishes tickets. Passports too.

Safety of your own property

Even the Autism Services Network, whose meetings' accessibility for us in the east is affected by Citylink's practices, have not received a word of answer, been completely ignored by Citylink. Even a project working with government funding.

Folks need to be warned against travelling anywhere by Citylink, on a free bus pass, outside the main population belt, off the frequently bus served roads. It is operating an arrogant policy of seizing bus passes from passengers without their consent, either if they don't work on the scanners or if the photo is eroded. Some weeks ago I saw it happen to an old couple not even at the point of boarding, when they might have a chance to grab the pass back out of any thief's hands, but in mid journey at the hands of an inspector. They were on their outward journey of a holiday and concerned about the effect on their return journey, and the coach was in remote country at the time, where if thrown off it for not cooperating they would have no other means of travel.

Citylink when complained to called this a "policy" and made not a word of admission of folks' right to hold on to their personal proerty. They even denied it would be violence for a driver to steal a pass and refuse to give it back.

Folks known to Elas through Number 6 have had it done to them and not had their new pass arrive in time before the temporary paper pass they were given expired, which is only a week. With the onus on you to apply for as new pass, you could very easily not have time to do it in time if you are on the outward journey of a holiday.

THIS IS A DANGER TO PERSONAL PROPERTY. That it can be stopped is an absolute test of the autism strategy's efficacy. Maurice Frank

Bus pass danger

If you have a concessionary bus pass, be alarmed and logically outraged at the danger involved in finding that the words printed on it may not be honoured.

A pass bears a date that it is "valid until." That means it is valid on the day concerned, that is the common usage of valid - valid until the day which is the last day of validity.

The scanners that read the passes when you get on the bus may not agree, and worst, they are not all following the same line everywhere. On the pass's last day, you can use it on First Bus, totally normally, travel miles from home, then find that Lothian Buses' scanners reject it and deem it as expired already.

What is most dangerous about this illegal mess, is that you are miles from home when this happens, as it did to me today on the way to work. You have begun your travel on a basis that the pass is okay. What if this happened at the other end of the country? What if you were coming home from holiday on the pass's last day?

Folks who are not getting a new pass will thus find themselves conned as to the oast day of the facility's availability. This will happen to folks who have a pass on grounds of DLA and whose level of DLA changes.

Most passholders, me included, are getting a new pass, and I was relieved to get my application accepted at the library 3 weeks ago after, when I tried at 6 weeks, getting told I had to wait until only 2 weeks, which would have been a kife-edge discomfort. But I have written here already about my strong view on the dangerous unworkability of needing to carry any physcial identfiier at all to entitle you to travel, because of what can happen, how massively your day can go wrong, if it gets lost or stolen which is not your fault. This is made a disability discrimination issue by our spectrum, in particular by ADHD and dyspraxia, which carry an increased risk of losing things. This as far as I am concerned already makes all need for physical tickets and passes an illegal medical discrimination. But obviously, the political world has not yet chosen to buy a message that makes such a radical change, never mind the danger that all public transport passengers are in at all times.

That is why I would have felt completely stupid and humiliated if I lost my new pass while still having the old one valid, it was wrong to choose to take that risk. Hence I chose instead to keep on using my old pass right up to its last day.

The scanners have never been necessary either. They are only there to count passengers for the company to claim back their fares. When bus passes began there were no scanners, it just worked by show Most pass users know how the scanners have periodic phases of unreliability, especially on Stagecoach. They cause frustrations and practical delaya at stops, and concerned baffled oldies find their scanners not resistering until several atempts.

Now, who is going to take responsibility for putting the system right urgently? Transport ministry, council office that issues passes, or Lothian Buses for having its scanners set wrong? Meanwhile this can happen to anyone any day, which is misleading hence illegal. We have written to the council office first. Intowork had been put to extra inconvenience to drive me to work.

The position now, is that the authorities can no longer answer, without by it acknowledging the safety case that passes and tickets must be totally abolished. All we need to effect a massive reform overdue by 2 centuries, is for you to take an interest in their answer and not run away from the issue's originality. Remember, these safety issues can happen to you, in any travel.

When you have a bus pass in recognition with special needs that is actually in recognition that coping with transport operators' self-interested demands on passengers and relating successfully to their staff can be difficult. Hence, the powers that be now stand asked directly: should folks with an acknowldged extra need and a communication diffculty look after our own safety when we travel. They can't answer no. See, that would be an open statement of englect of us and our safety. Don't take care of your own safety? The whole health and safety system and the whole law of negligence would collapse. Hence they have to answer yes, no alternative.

But in answering yes, to my reason for caring for my safety by continuing to use my old pass up to the last day - they acknowledge the fact that reliance on physical losable passes and tickets is unsafe. That makes it illegal and invalid, an acknowledged violation of safety, for them to allow tickets and passes and passports and any system at all of carried physical documents verifying your status, to continue to exist.

Maurice Frank