Recently at a commuter student event I sat down with two students who talked about their experience commuting to university by tram.
Both had lived in Manchester their whole lives and hoped to work in the city after graduation. However, the public transport network posed a significant barrier.
One student who lives at home in Stockport faces a costly one-hour commute every day – the cost isn’t just the price of the travel, it’s the time spent, or rather lost, on transport. The delays to trams mean they often miss classes. These costs are all a result of which postcode they happen to live in.
For students across Greater Manchester, and commuter students more broadly, getting to and from university shouldn’t feel like a huge financial burden. Yet, while the Bee Network (Greater Manchester’s integrated transport network) offers generous student discounts for those who use the bus, those who rely on trams are still left paying full price.
As part of the work of the Greater Manchester Student Partnership (GMSP) we ensure that students are represented in regional civic policymaking, and when it comes to tram prices, we’re doing exactly that.
Pricing it up
At the moment, the Bee Network is providing an invaluable student discount for bus travel. A termly bus ticket for students costs the equivalent of £35 a month, compared to £80 a month for an adult ticket. It’s a significant saving.
However, for students who commute by tram, the picture looks very different.
A student living in zone four and travelling regularly into zone one for lectures would find that the most economical tram ticket, the 28-day pass, costs £101.80. This means that a local student commuting from home by tram could be paying nearly three times more than a student travelling by bus.
Whilst there’s a student discount on one part of the Bee Network, it hasn’t yet been extended to trams.
What do the studies say?
The evidence in favour of affordable public transport for students is overwhelming. Well priced and convenient transport improves academic outcomes, wellbeing and social inclusion.
An NUS survey from 2023 revealed the financial burden that transport has on students, nearly half of respondents said transport accounted for 25 per cent of their weekly spending. One in five had missed class because they couldn’t afford travel costs.
And the impact extends beyond just academics: 35 per cent had cut down on extracurricular activities, 35 per cent had missed seeing family and 32 per cent had skipped meals due to travel costs.
The cost of travel impacts all areas of student life – a commitment to subsidised student travel could drastically improve quality of life.
International evidence echoes these findings. A 2021 study at Rio Hondo College demonstrated the direct correlation free transport had with better academic performance. In fact, they found that students who received subsidised public transport in their initial term had higher one-semester and one-year retention by five per cent respectively.
Similarly, a 2014 study focusing on the free public transport scheme for young people in London found that it improved social inclusion as well as increasing the use of sustainable transport. Bus use by adults and young people increased by 31 per cent after the scheme was launched – it’s a win-win. This seemingly simple cost intervention can have a transformative impact on students’ lives.
Building belonging
At the commuter student event we spoke to another student who has just started a degree apprenticeship. They talked about their frustrations that the last tram is at midnight.
Building a social network is an essential part of university life, but having to leave early to catch the last tram limits his ability to engage in campus life and social events. It’s really hard to be a “day visitor” at a boarding school and still feel involved. SUs can adapt the way they deliver events and programmes so as to not disadvantage different groups of students, but they also need to advocate for more accessible transport that doesn’t stop students from engaging in the stuff outside the classroom.
One student who was inspired by our open letter to the mayor, shared their story of commuting by tram.
James explained:
I used to take the tram in my first year not knowing how expensive it was going to be. Now I sacrifice the tram for the bus to save money because it’s becoming too unsustainably expensive for me. It’s made my commute time from one hour and fifteen minutes to nearly two hours.
I live in a zone four area and I have to get a bus to get to my interchange from my house. The bus from there to Manchester takes over an hour.
However, the bus and tram pass options cost nearly three times more than if I just got the bus. This is affecting my productivity and it means I have to wake up at 6am to catch the bus at 7am for a 9am lecture.
These stories are far from unique. They reflect the daily challenges faced by commuter students across Greater Manchester who want to study locally but are faced with the high cost of transport.
As Joel Dowson has argued before on the site, to make universities more desirable for commuter students, improving the reliability, accessibility and price of transport goes a long way. We have that win on buses but not yet on trams.
What happens next
On the 16th of October, the executive officers from each of the five students’ unions in Greater Manchester, as part of the GMSP, sent an open letter to Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham urging him to create a discounted student ticket for trams. This will be followed up with an in-person meeting with the Mayor to go over our policy recommendations.
Two alternatives to the current system are suggested in the letter:
- The introduction of a 30 per cent student discount on all tram tickets that can be purchased on the Bee Network app. This discount would be the same as the current discount on weekly, monthly and termly bus tickets.
- Allowing students to purchase a “bolt on” to the current student bus passes to include tram travel.
This simple change would drastically improve the access commuter students have to university and student social events, and would hopefully improve academic performance and belonging.
The GMSP believes that student voice is a vital component of shaping regional civic policy. Without it, we risk creating a system that fails to take the student perspective into account and designs services without students in mind.
If Greater Manchester is serious about being a truly student-friendly and connected city, then affordable tram travel must be part of that vision. It’s time students got a fair deal on trams.
