Free travel is an easy lift, and a meaningful perk for paying into the tax system during a lifetime of work.

I get the means tested argument, yes, many pensioners are very well off and many are in poverty, but all have served their time, paid their dues, some have had a luckier roll of the life dice than others, some were wiser in youth and prepared better, but all make up our collective past and origins.

What harm is free transport?, I don't see them clogging up the tube or mainline trains and shouldn't a progressive benefit overt time accrue to our longest contributing members of society.

Who said you judge a society by how it takes care of it young and old ? We are slipping badly on both counts I feel, lets not focus on the weakest and begrudge them a boon.

edit, In Ireland u get free travel and free travel for someone to accompany you, pity the public transport system is so shit there.

And one further thought, where is the hard incremental cost associated with pensioner travel, I'm going to guess that the modes of transport they use, bused and trains are not running at capacity , so there is just the extra fuel to move the bodyweight about, I'm going to say the transport system is has a very very very low cost per additional user