HERE'S an interesting finding. Teenagers in York appear reluctant to use public buses - even when they're free.

The city council set aside £100,000 to pay for free weekend bus travel in January and February for young people aged under 18. But they estimate that by the end of the trial, so few teenagers will have taken advantage of the offer that only £28,000 will have been spent.

The authority now has to decide whether to continue the trial for another six weeks, at a cost of up to £50,000 - or scrap it, but spend £2,000 on a survey to find out why young people didn't take advantage of it.

It is all a little mystifying: especially since the trial was introduced after members of York's Youth Council asked for something to be done to make buses more appealing to teenagers.

As the old saying goes, you can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

It might well be worth spending £2,000 finding out just what the problem was. Perhaps the scheme wasn't very well publicised. Or it might be that teenagers are more interested in their Smartphones than actually going anywhere.

But until we know why, we can't see any point in spending another £50,000 on a service that young people don't seem interested in - especially when the council is making deep cuts to vital services elsewhere.