Success with Travel Pass - but How?

Back in 2021, as the NHS rolled out the vaccine and lockdown was being lifted, my disability concessionary travel pass expired. 

I’d been using the pass, issued by Transport for Greater Manchester (later rebranded as The Bee Network), since 2008 for free travel on buses and trams and it’d been a great help. But then in’21 I just didn’t hear from them. I phoned, emailed, etc. What did they need from me? Normally they just sent me a new one, or at least gave me some application info. But no. Nothing. I spoke to the bus pass team at my local authority. They backed me up and sent on all the info they’d asked me for – psych assessments, recent medical info from NHS appointments, but… nothing. 

The main problem seemed to be that I wasn’t under social care. I had been briefly in 2010/2011, but not since then. I tried to contact TfGM themselves, but I didn’t get far. Nobody seemed to know anything. I’d first got a travel pass long before I was even diagnosed, let alone under social care. What was the issue? 

Someone at the Local Authority told me that either they or TfGM had been handing out passes ‘willy nilly’ and that there were far too many being issued, so they were cracking down. That’s as far as I got.

In more recent months, I got involved with Social Prescribing, as I blogged a while ago. One of the things we looked into was travel passes. I’m not sure exactly what we did right this time. Perhaps it was the fact that I was involved with their service. But either way, I applied online without Social Prescribing’s oversight, as far as I can remember. I included my medical info relating to short term memory difficulties… and the pass arrived at the end of March. 

Well, that’s good. Hold up, though. In the past 4 years, there’s been a slight alteration. I’ve read the small print. 

‘Where and when you can use your pass. Within Greater Manchester: Travel for free on all buses and Metrolink trams within Greater Manchester between 9:30am and midnight, Monday to Friday, and all day weekends and public holidays. If you travel outside of these times you must pay a full concessionary fare.’ 

This is different. The pass I had from ’08-’21 was valid 24hrs a day. Why this change? I wouldn’t have been able to use it to get to work, starting at 8:40. I started driving to work in the early days of lockdown, so I’ve not used many buses since then. 

I’ve used the travel pass on public transport recently without incident, and should be able to until 2028. It’s a small win, and we take them where we find them. It’s all you can do. I think I have Social Prescribing to thank for that.