Kate Smith reports for UTV's Good Evening Ulster on a
meeting of pensioner representatives and the head of Ulsterbus and Citybus
chief, Werner Heubeck. The pensioners had been campaigning for some time for
free transport for the over-65s, and this was the first time they had been able
to make the case to Heubeck in person. A representative makes the point that
buses that were running almost empty could be populated easily by pensioners
who would then be able to get more out of life by visiting friends and family.
Heubeck himself
states that only government has the power to introduce the measure but states
that he is not in favour of it anyway and that it would provide overcrowding
problems in certain circumstances. Today, free travel for pensioners is taken
for granted, having been introduced by the Stormont Assembly in 2001. It is
also widespread across the United Kingdom. However, as this report shows,
pensioners had to fight for this right for many years and a large number of
those campaigning in 1985 would not live to see the day they won their cause.