Horsham students '˜passionate' about campaign for cheaper travel fares

The group of first year Collyer’s students argue that 16 and 17 year olds should not have to pay adult fares on public transport.

The class have been studying pressure groups, and formed the ‘FareTravel’ campaign after they were advised by a teacher to start their own group.

Within 24 hours, their online petition had amassed 500 signatures, with 1,000 names the next target.

Jack Edwards said: “We brainstormed ideas and we unanimously thought travel fares were quite a common problem for our age group and something we would like to change.

“We weren’t expecting that much support straight away, but we knew it was an issue that people felt strongly about.

“Our generation has suffered a lot with tuition fees and being denied the right to vote at 16 and 17, but we are still classed as adults in the eyes of train fares, which doesn’t seem to be overly fair.”

The campaigners said that teenagers who are legally children, on a child’s wage and in full-time education should be offered discounted fares.

And they added that while travel cards are available, they are still more expensive than child tickets and cost money to buy initially.

Currently, passengers aged 16 and over are charged adult fares by providers such as Southern Rail and Metrobus.

Ola Edgal explained that a friend from Horsham was forced to quit a promising course at Chichester College as he wasn’t able to maintain the costly train fares.

He said: “Changing laws is a really difficult thing to do. The most important thing is to show everyone that young people do feel passionately about this.

“If you are not using trains a lot, it is not good value for money.”

Liam Cannon added: “We are going to be out of this age bracket soon so we were thinking about doing it for younger people like our brothers and sisters, for them as opposed to us.”

The group has also received support on social media, and have set up a Facebook page and Twitter profile.

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