Hello, everyone, every day brings you up to date, with more content, and every piece is dry. In recent times, news of public transport policy has spread widely across communities and short video platforms, and many people have lost their minds and even a little anxiety. In summary, the news is three words: no more finance, return of the grand duke, cancellation of the old age card. A lot of people have come to ask if this is the original of the document from the four ministries. Will the old man no longer be able to use the card for free? Will the bus stop in bulk and then have to drive or taxi
This topic concerns every person who travels on a daily basis, especially retired older persons, those who do not have a private car, and those who normally rely on public transport. However, the online version, which changes policy, captures fragments and magnifies risks, is far from the same as the original version of official documents. Today we take the official text, one by one, to say what is true, what is misperception, what is the change in policy, what will be real changes in the future for our ordinary people, and to talk about the difficulties facing the public transport industryReformThen which way will the bus go。
Put the core message in front of you and give you a pill. None of the three internet sentences, “feed out, returned the grand duke, and the old-age card was cancelled”, were directly written in the original document, but were all the subject of one-sided, over-processed rumours. The four ministerial documents referred to in this statement, entitled " guidance for the further reform of urban public transport enterprises " , were issued by the ministry of transport, the national development and reform commission, the ministry of finance, and the ministry of human resources and social security and sent under the symbol [2026] no. 122, published on 23 september 2026 and released to the public at the end of september, is an official guidance document issued with the consent of the state department. It is not simply a fake document created on the internet. The document itself is real and it is distorted when it is disseminated。
Many have reduced the content of the document, “reform of the subsidy system, pressure on responsibility, classification of operations”, directly to “fiscal care, no more backsliding”; to “optimization of the route, adjustment of mobility on demand” to “extracting the grand duchy and mass transportation”; and to “encouraging the transition to old age allowance instead of free transportation” to “national unified abolition of the old-age card”. This hysteria is also the main reason for the spread of anxiety in recent days。
Let's start with the first hotspot: is it true that finance is no longer in the background
First of all, we need to understand a basic concept, the “fiscal base” that many have understood in the past, which is a very vague impression: public transport companies pay no matter how much they lose, local finances pay no matter how well they run, how little they waste, whether the lines are occupied or not, and the losses are fully covered by the finances. This is not the original design of the policy, and in many cases the old-age subsidy is in fact a policy loss compensation rather than an open-ended exercise。
In this four-ministerial document, it is clearly written in the original language that the system of compensation for government subsidies is strictly enforced, that public transport is the responsibility of municipal and district finances and that local governments are to incorporate public transport development funds into their own budgets. With regard to the policy losses arising from the implementation of low ticket prices, old-age discounts, cold long lines and emergency security missions, local finances are still required to compensate for subsidies, guarantee the normal running of basic public transport lines and guarantee the basic movement of the population。
What did you change the file? It has changed the way in which subsidies have been provided, from a rough amount in the past, to a sum of total losses, to a cost-approved cost, an evaluation mechanism, and subsidies for quality of service. In short, there have been places where public transport enterprises have suffered more or less, where there is a lack of incentives to save costs, where people are swollen, vehicles are idle, many lines of passenger traffic rarely run for long periods of time, fuel, security, management costs are high and financial pressures are heavier every year. After the reform, the subsidy is no longer a “deficit”, but rather a basic travel service standard that is defined by agreement on the first shift, the spacing, coverage, accounting for reasonable operating costs, taking into account nuclear safety, accuracy rates, service compliance, compliance with the standard, payment of subsidies at the approved level, unreasonable waste, additional losses caused by mismanagement, and no longer the financial burden。
This is the source of many of the "fiscal no-go" stories directly from the media. The exact expression should be the elimination of the non-discriminatory, non-ceiling deficit, the retention of statutory policy deficit subsidies, the regularization of subsidies and the linkage between the quality of services, and not the financial trade-off。
Here, two distinct losses are distinguished. The first loss is that resulting from policy coercion. For example, the cost of the bus fare is two dollars, which has not increased for more than a decade, far below the actual operating cost; the elderly, the disabled, and the military receive a reduction in their income directly, in accordance with the regulations; and there is a low flow of passengers to urban suburbs, new districts and remote sub-districts, but in order to ensure that the population travels, it is necessary to keep the lines, which are a policy loss, and the responsibility lies with the government, which must be supplemented by the financial resources required to do so. The second loss is the result of the enterprise's own management problems, such as the large size of the institution, the large non-essential expenses, the irregular nature of the procurement, the waste of vehicle protection, the blindness of the new route, and the business loss, which the document clearly requires the enterprise to digest itself and cannot be fully channelled to finance。
The purpose of this design is not to abandon public transport, but to make subsidies more efficient, with the same financial resources that can maintain more stable lines, better services and avoid inefficient spending. The paper also mentions that no additional hidden local government debt is allowedFinancial subsidiesIt is important to organize the budget with local financial resources. Cities with financial constraints can no longer afford to spread blindly, access large lines, be well calculated and prioritize the maintenance of the main lines just needed by the population rather than simply suspending public transport。
The second rumor: the grand duke returned to the market, and there was no bus
It is also a serious exaggeration. The document does not contain the words “the return of the grand duke”, nor does it require the elimination of conventional large buses. The original idea was that the public transport network would no longer be fully integrated across all routes, depending on the local context。
All these years have seen the reality that the urban backbone, with its high numbers of people coming in early and late, the large bus carrying hundreds of people, its high value, its commuting power, and its bus traffic, will certainly be retained and at the heart of urban public transport. However, many feeder lines, new districts, peri-urban areas, old sub-districts have low round-the-clock passenger flows, sometimes only three or five people in a car, a dozen metres-long bus, high fuel consumption, driver's wages, maintenance costs, empty trips, far higher costs than bill revenues, long-term unaffordable businesses, and pressure on financial subsidies。
The document encourages flexibility in adjusting to the movement of passengers. The main main road, which has a large population, continues to be encrypted by regular bus traffic; the thin-flowed feeder, access line can be replaced by minibuses, micro-cycle minibuses, reservation-response buses, or customized bus traffic, which you have heard of as a “show-and-stop, online appointment”, with some links to the internet and rural passenger traffic. This is the prototype of the internet-based return of the grand duke。
Rather than completely eliminating bus buses and leaving the market, it returns to its main corridor, replacing smaller and more flexible feeder lines with fewer passenger lines, optimizing traffic matching and reducing waste. Many cities are already doing this ahead of schedule, with long-line suburban areas, peak periods with buses, peak periods with minibuses, both securing travel and controlling operating costs。
There's one thing we're worried about. Will you cut the circuits? The bottom line of the document is clear: basic travel must be guaranteed. What do you mean, "basic travel"? The main urban settlements, businesses, hospitals, schools and government halls, which are newly needed, must be covered by public transport and cannot be compressed at the end of the shift. Intervals can be adjusted, models replaced and duplicate lines combined, but basic access to the population cannot be cut directly. The long-term extremely low passenger flow, the availability of alternative transport, the long-term loss and the absence of immediate lifelines would allow for the assessment of adjustments or conversion to bookings, rather than cutting off all lines。
At the same time, the document also encourages public transport enterprises to pool their resources and not to survive by selling tickets or paying subsidies. This is also an important aspect of the reform. A public transport company cannot be a single public utility operator, but must expand its compliance operations and build its own capacity for blood production, while keeping the people's bottom line。
Third, and most of all, is there a concern that the old-age card will be cancelled and that the elderly will not be able to take a free bus
First of all, the four-ministerial document, at the national level, does not call for the universal abolition of free-of-charge old-age travel cards and there is no one-size-fits-all policy to eliminate them. A number of short videos refer directly to “old age cards being invalidated” as a guiding recommendation in the policy as mandatory。
The original text states that: the implementation of the statutory car preference policy at the local level is based on the application of maximum capacity and reasonable definition of the range of preferential groups; and that the provision of a comprehensive age allowance for older persons is encouraged, where possible, as an alternative to the preferential car policy. The keyword “encourages” the “replacement” of “conditional” is an alternative, not a hard task。
We understand that. The law on the protection of the rights and interests of older persons explicitly requires that urban public transport should provide preferential care for older persons, a statutory privilege that cannot be directly abolished, but only by way of preferential treatment, which can be achieved in one place or another。
The first is the old-age card, which we now know best, which is free or half-priced, and the programme being implemented by the vast majority of the country's cities. The elderly are given a card, a public transport, a direct metro credit, and are given preferential treatment in connection with the act of travelling in a car so that they can enjoy their benefits。
The second is the alternative to allowances. There is no longer a separate free-carriage card, which would have been used to subsidize public transport enterprises and which would have been sent directly monthly or quarterly to social security cards and bank cards for the elderly, which would have turned into a cash subsidy. Once the elderly have received the money, they can buy their own tickets by car, which can also be used for food, medical care, taxis and more widely. A typical example of this pattern is the early adjustment of the country's shanghai system to a comprehensive old-age allowance for free travel。
There is a key point to be distinguished: the replacement allowance is not the same as the benefit is less, but the form of the benefit is changed; at the same time, it is not suitable for all cities. This programme is suitable for large cities with good financial conditions, a well-structured older population and a well-developed distribution system. Many of the cities and counties on the 3rd and 4th line, with a large number of older persons on a financial footing, would be under a heavy one-time expenditure pressure if they were converted to cash benefits and would continue to maintain the old-age card model at the local level and would not be forcibly replaced。
At the same time, the paper emphasizes the need to maintain full compliance with the old-age card car preferences, where financial resources are not adequate, without changing to cash subsidies. Moreover, even if a city chooses to change to a subsidy model, it will publicize it well in advance, set up a transition period, and will not directly expire today, or tomorrow。
There is also a practical problem with the fact that in many places there are now ceilings on the number of days of old age cards, such as 50 free trips per month and 60 free trips per month, after which the normal purchase of tickets is exceeded, which is a local regulation, not required by this four-ministerial document. The design was intended to reduce the number of repeated use of cards by a few to exploit public resources and to safeguard the rights and interests of the elderly, who had just to travel, and was not directly tied to the reform document。
In that connection, many would ask why the country had put in place the reform document, since it had not been the one-size-fits-all elimination of subsidies and the abolition of old-age cards. The real reasons behind this are also clear and objective in order to facilitate understanding of the original purpose of the reform, not to change policy by taking a blind eye。
The domestic public transport industry, which has been under constant pressure for more than a decade, has been burdened by several pressures. First, private cars, internet connection, shared bicycles and metro lines are constantly being built, residents have become more and more mobile, and regular bus traffic has generally declined. Many cities have less than one year of income from bus fares, which already do not cover the basic costs of vehicle consumption, driver's salaries, protection, station rents, and are naturally dependent on financial subsidies。
Second, ageing continues, with the number of older groups benefiting from free rides rising year by year, the gap in fares resulting from old-age relief continues to widen, the level of subsidies continues to rise year by year, and many local financial burdens are increasing. Added to this is the spread of new energy buses, the cost of purchasing vehicles, battery replacement costs, and the cost of charging utilities, which is higher than the previous fuel trucks and further increases operating expenses。
Thirdly, in the past, many local public transport enterprises were old state enterprises, with ageing human structures, multiple levels of management, loose cost-control, even if they were financially sustainable, lacked the incentive to proactively reduce efficiency gains, depended on subsidies for long periods of time, and, once local finances were tightened, there was an immediate risk that wages would be paid and routes would be difficult to maintain。
If the old model is maintained, there are only two long-term results: either financial subsidies continue to increase, squeezing other living resources, such as education, health care and old age; or subsidies fail to keep pace, public transport enterprises are difficult to run, forced to reduce classes, shut off lines and, lastly, the movement of civilians is affected. In essence, the reform sought to find a more sustainable model that would hold the public goods line, while reducing long-term fiscal pressures and forcing public transport companies to practice their domestic skills and not to remain on the back of subsidies。
Next, let us say that when this document is laid down, it is likely that ordinary people will see real changes in the future, in the light of policy direction and experience that has been tested in various places, so that we can figure it out in advance。
First, subsidies are transparent and service standards are better written. Each city will then publish a list of basic public transport services, which are guaranteed public goods lines, points at the end of the shift, how long are the peaks and how often the flat peaks are lowest, and the enterprises will have to meet the standards, which will reduce the subsidy. Public transport is no longer entirely business-owned, and stable basic services are more secure for those who travel frequently。
Second, the bus type and the line structure will be slowly adjusted. The main road bus has priority coverage; the suburban and subdistrict connections have slowly increased the number of minibuses and scheduled buses. Instead of waiting for the bus, some of the feeder lines may need to book cars in advance on a small program, and travel habits may change slightly, with the advantage of reducing long run hours and pooling financial resources to protect the main trunk。
Third, the policy of preferential treatment in old age would lead to a city-wide divide. The transition to old-age allowance is possible in economically well-developed and well-financed cities; the vast majority of ordinary local and county cities and towns probably continue to retain old-age cards free of charge or half-priced by car, and some cities may optimize the age threshold and the number of free monthly trips, which will be open for comment before adjustment and will not land quietly. If you want to know how your city is changed, do not look at short video rumors, focusing on the official circulars of the local transport, finance and civil affairs departments, which are based on local communications。
Fourth, public transport enterprises expand their market operations. In the future, you will see more businesses using commuting lines, factory shuttles, tourist charters, school-specific buses, using the income generated from these marketed operations, subsidizing low-flow public-interest lines and reducing dependence on finance, which is also the direction of policy encouragement。
Fifth, fare mechanisms would be more flexible. The long-term two-dollar-one-vote model is gradually optimized in some cities, such as peak flat-rate differential fare prices and long-distance segment pricing, but basic demand lines and low fare public-interest attributes will not disappear and will not simply increase prices. The adjustment also requires hearings and publicity and does not increase prices。
And here's another one of the widespread errors: many say that after the reform, public transportation will be fully marketed and turned into a purely lucrative business, with the government ignoring the livelihood of the people. This understanding is wrong, and the document begins with a clear statement that urban public transport is an important public good, a work of livelihood, a public good that remains the same, and that the goal of the reform is to be healthy and sustainable, not to push public transport completely into the market. A purely market-based model, with no access to the urban basic bus, remote lines, low-flowing lines, and no means of earning money on the basis of a ticket, is the bottom line for the government to guarantee that the base travels, and the document is not abandoned from scratch。
We can also look at cities that have been piloting similar policies to see what they actually look like. Some cities account for the standard of subsidy for each line, and the number of main line shifts is stable and has not decreased; when the feeder is replaced by a minibus, the time is more manageable; in the cities that choose the subsidy model, the elderly get cash, take a bus and buy a ticket, and do not want to use it elsewhere, leaving the choice to the elderly themselves. There are, of course, some disputes in the pilot process, such as the low and low level of benefits, the threshold for the granting of benefits, and the inconvenient availability of public transport in remote areas, all of which need to be adapted to local conditions when locals land。
There are several practical suggestions for our ordinary people, especially for groups that are often in public transport. First, receiving policy messages, giving priority to the bureau of transport and communications, the network of government officials, official public numbers, video clips, the title of a sentence in the community, is easy to intercept to create anxiety, to see the message first in the original language, to find local official interpretation, and not to panic with rumours. Secondly, if a friend holds a senior card, there is no need to worry that the card will expire immediately, that it will be adjusted in a preferential manner and that the cycle will be long, with notice given in advance and a transition period. Thirdly, if you live on the outskirts of the city or in a new district, you will then look at the entrance to the local bus platform and adapt to the new mode of travel, which is micro-cycled minibuses and scheduled bus. Fourth, if a local policy of public fares and old-age preferences were to be followed up for comment, everyone could give a reasoned feedback on their claims, and the authorities concerned would collect their opinions and balance their financial resources against their travel needs in order to develop programmes。
Objectively speaking, the reform of public transport is itself a difficult matter to balance with the demands of all parties. From a fiscal point of view, local financial resources are limited and the pressure on subsidies to keep rising needs to be controlled; from a public transport enterprise, the flow of passengers is declining, the cost rises and the pressure on survival is real; from a older person's perspective, free public transport is important for the well-being of the population, directly linked to daily purchases of vegetables and access to health care; and from a young commuter's point of view, it is hoped that the number of public transport shifts will be stable, accurate and the route sufficient. There is no programme that is entirely satisfactory to all, and the direction of the reform is to find a balance between financial resources, the survival of enterprises and the movement of the population, and to hold the bottom line of the basic journey。
Another point is that many people will go through the reform of public transport, with the idea of a future urban/rural passenger transport and rural bus policy. It is clear from here that this document is aimed at urban public buses, i. E. Urban buses, with a separate subsidy policy for rural passenger, urban and rural buses, which is not directly covered by this four-ministerial document and is not comprehensible. Rural passenger transport itself has fewer passenger flows, and in many places the bus, responsive appointment model has long been used, unlike urban bus security standards。
There have also been widespread rumours on the internet that there will be no basis for the cancellation of all disability, military and student cards. The document refers only to the rational determination of the range of preferential groups, and the policy of preferential treatment of statutory preferential groups is implemented in accordance with specific laws and regulations and will not be completely eliminated as a result of the reform of public transport. In order to optimize preferential policies, priority will also be given to guaranteeing disability and preferential access for such groups。
To sum up the entire text, three sentences are posted online, each of which is extremely simplified:
1. It is not the end of the financial cycle, it is the elimination of the ceiling deficit, the retention of policy deficit subsidies, the link between subsidies and the quality of services
2. It is not the return of the grand duke, but the switch to a small, booked bus-type, with the main bus continuing as the main means of guaranteeing commuting
3. The elimination of old-age cards is not a national one-size-fits-all approach, but is an incentive for municipalities in a position to opt for alternatives to subsidies. It is a local option and not a mandatory requirement。
The aim of the policy reform is to make the public transport industry more permanent, to avoid a situation in which subsidies are unsustainable and lines are largely disconnected, to end up at a point where people can travel on a daily basis. Following this guidance, the provinces and cities will produce local implementation programmes that take into account their financial situation, size of the population and mobility characteristics, and will vary significantly from one city to another, with no uniform and one-size-fits-all results。
As the rules continue to be issued in subsequent locations, much more will be done to clarify them, and i will continue to follow the programmes that have landed in various locations and collate and share accurate information. You do not have to be worried about online, one-sided news, long policy adjustment cycles, publicity, transition periods, and all changes are communicated to the public in advance。
Today we can talk together: are you more in favour of keeping the old-age free-rider card, or is it a monthly travel allowance? Are the bus shifts and circuits in your city meeting your daily travel needs? You are welcome to leave your comments in the comment area, to focus on the accounts and to keep abreast of policy developments related to the livelihood of the transport population。
