Main menu For students For teachers Explore our subjects Student events & courses

Teaching Economics

In the News

Flexible ticket pricing likely as workers stop their daily commute

Graham Watson

6th July 2020

Share this content:

This is an example of how coronavirus may have changed the way the labour market operates and affected consumer tastes too.

A fall in demand for commuting, amid a more general fall in the demand for public transport is going to mean lower demand, which itself begs interesting questions about the extent to which the government is going to have to support the sector, and ask for innovative responses to pricing.

In this case, a fall in Monday to Friday commuting is likely to encourage firms to offer more flexible season tickets and so on - although, you might argue that the structure of the market to some extent mitigates against this, in that train operating companies face no direct competition. It will be fascinating to see how they respond.

Share this content:

Graham Watson

Graham Watson has taught Economics for over twenty years. He contributes to Tutor2U, reads voraciously and is interested in all aspects of Teaching and Learning.