CHEAP rail fares for pensioners in and around Scotland's biggest city are to be scrapped during evening rush hour.
The elderly and disabled are currently entitled to concessionary fares across the old Strathclyde network at any time after 9am.
Today councillors responsible for Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) will be asked to ban such travel from 4.30pm to 6pm.
The move should bring the west of Scotland into line with the rest of the country, where such restrictions are already in place.
The SNP has sought to pin blame for the proposed cutback on the Labour councillors who run SPT.
SNP councillor Graeme Hendry said: "I have little doubt that many Glasgow pensioners will be badly affected by this proposal from SPT so I would urge Labour not to try and further reduce access to concessionary travel."
The decision has to be made by SPT's concession scheme committee, which brings together councillors from across the west of Scotland.
Officials have called on the committee to back the changes, which they say are designed to keep the scheme alive during a time of budget cutbacks.
An SPT spokesman said: "The proposed changes are made to ensure the long term stability of the concession scheme at a time when funding is extremely tight. We welcome the reductions in operator reimbursement, but the committee is continually challenged to consider ways to reduce the cost of the scheme and keep it in-line with available budgets for the year ahead."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article