Passenger numbers have returned faster than bus services in the period since Covid. Are bus operators getting the balance right?
Our industry has been put through the wringer once or twice in the AD era.
2025 is my 10th year working in the bus industry. It also marks five years since the pandemic began and changed so many things so quickly. That means my career so far can be evenly divided into BC (Before Covid) and AD (Anno Differentia). My definition of ‘normal’ is quite different from that of my older and more experienced colleagues – and probably worlds apart from those who came in after me.
The pandemic itself was just one of the disruptive events of the last half-decade. It led to lasting changes in the way we work, shop and socialise, reducing the need to travel. It inspired the ‘Great Resignation’, where many people in their late-50s and early-60s (a cohort overrepresented in bus depots and bothies up and down the land) took early retirement to enjoy more time with their families and hobbies. That was swiftly followed by the war in Ukraine, which, among other things, sent the costs of fuel and energy sky high and triggered a cost-of-living crisis. Brexit also kicked in officially in 2021, which hit the haulage sector especially hard and resulted in an army of professional drivers swapping buses for lorries. Timetables and reliability were consequently battered by a protracted shortage of bus drivers, and operators had to offer generous (read: expensive) pay rates to get new people in the door and stop others from eyeing the exit.
Suffice it to say: our industry has been put through the wringer once or twice in the AD era.
One of the scars it still bears is a shrunken network. Department of Transport data can be sliced and diced in all sorts of ways, but the most recent figures show that, across Great Britain (outside London), network mileage in 2023/24 was just 84.6% of 2019/20 (pre-Covid) levels. This is outstripped by patronage, which had a 90.5% recovery rate. I accept that a chunk of the mileage drop is due to the coincidence of budget cuts, leading to the withdrawal or reduction of many subsidised services (especially in rural areas). But commercial and urban networks have been significantly pared back as well. For instance, only 76% of mileage has been restored in Hull, 64% in Blackpool, and just 50% in Milton Keynes. Conversely, mileage on the rural Isle of Wight is fully restored, and Southern Vectis reports that patronage – including 9-in-10 pensioners – is bouncing back.
It was once typical for the core services to run every 10 minutes on weekdays. Now, the standard is every quarter-hour
Where I live, in Dundee, it was once typical for the core services to run every 10 minutes on weekdays (with a couple even running every 7-8 minutes). Now, the standard is every quarter-hour, with just one service, the 22, running every 12 minutes; even with that slight boost, our flagship route remains a diminished version of its former self. Across the rest of the city, thousands of passengers must make do with reductions of up to 50%.
Mind you, that’s not to say the buses aren’t busy. Far from it. My local bus is the 17: a cross-city route which serves some of Dundee’s largest housing estates, a dozen schools, the university, the city centre, three district centres, and several supermarkets before terminating at Ninewells Hospital. In the absence of a higher frequency, single-decks were a bit of a squeeze – especially at peak times. That’s why it was such a relief when a fleet of new electric Yutongs arrived in April: it meant the double-decks previously allocated to the 22 would be cascaded onto the 17 – which, until that point, was the only core service still squeezing its passengers onto single-decks.
If we can’t have better frequency, we’ll take extra space as a stopgap. Because greater capacity – whether it’s more buses or bigger buses – benefits operational efficiency as much as passenger comfort. Adding 30 seats to every journey means we don’t have to climb over each other to get on and off the bus. That, in turn, improves punctuality by reducing those pesky dwell times.
The 15-minute timetables were supposed to be “temporary adjustments” when they were introduced at the height of the driver shortage… in February 2022. The update to that effect is still on the website to this day. It optimistically says, “As we ramp up recruitment efforts, we’ll add journeys to our busiest routes just as soon as new drivers can be deployed behind the wheel.” It’s now been three years, all timetables except one have remained stagnant, and prices have risen four times since then (no fare cap on this side of Hadrian’s Wall!).
This isn’t unique to Dundee. There are examples of network shrinkage the length and breadth of this island. Not only does this foster mounting frustration with a privatised market, failing to restore mileage also risks impeding the recovery of patronage – and revenue. Running services with bigger gaps makes the commercial proposition so much weaker. It means working harder to plan a journey. It means waiting longer at the bus stop. It means slower journeys. It means being crammed in like sardines. And, fundamentally, it means paying more for less. Hardly an enticing sales pitch in the quest for modal shift.
If bus services only (barely) satisfy those who really need to use them, they will never attract those who have a choice in how they travel. Buses need to be convenient enough to compete with cars, otherwise we’re capping our own potential. Can you imagine any other industries voluntarily doing that to themselves?
Recovery rates vary significantly across the country, as does the size and strength of networks compared with their pre-Covid iterations. The graph shows a positive correlation between how well passenger numbers are doing and how much distance the network covers. There are outliers and a couple of curious oddities, yes, but the trend is clear: if you want more people to use your buses, give them more buses to use.
My foray into DfT data also found that the passenger per kilometre ratio reached 1.44 last year. That’s the highest it’s been since 1996, the year I was born. In the decade and a half after deregulation (that is, between 1985 and 2000), the ratio plummeted – by 46% from 2.49 to 1.35 – at the behest of newly unleashed commercial companies, which decided that forcing fare-paying customers to sit on each other’s laps was bad for business. Once optimised, the pax/km ratio held steady, averaging around 1.37 – and never exceeding 1.40 – for more than a quarter of a century. Until now.
This sudden jump came about because networks have failed to keep pace with the numbers of people trying to use them. Between 2023-24, patronage outside London grew by 11%, whereas mileage barely budged at all: a miserly 0.2%. That won’t hold forever. Famously, even the numbers who ‘rely’ on buses are ever-dwindling, trending downwards for 70 years. A so-called captive market isn’t a hostage situation; people will seek out alternatives if they’re fed up with subpar service. Those alternatives could be driving, walking – or simply avoiding the bus unless absolutely necessary. Do we really need to keep excavating just to see how deep rock bottom really is?
Do we really need to keep excavating just to see how deep rock bottom really is?
As ever, cost is the biggest hurdle operators face, and it’s been exacerbated in recent years by the events I outlined earlier. This, by and large, is the reason given for keeping services scaled down forevermore. A charitable assumption might be that decision-makers have become accustomed to a ‘new normal’ and don’t expect it to change much; it’s an industry well versed in managed decline, after all. A realist might say it’s risky to spend more with no guarantee it will pay off. And a cynic might argue that some operators out there are content to stuff more people onto fewer buses because it squeezes out a few extra pennies of profit. But if that’s the aim, they’re unwittingly shooting themselves in the foot.
So, what comes first: the bus, or the passenger? The correlation graph suggests that courage – and generosity – are rewarded when it comes to stimulating growth. Of the 75 authorities with shrunken networks, 67 also failed to recover passenger numbers to 100%; in fact, 45 of them lagged behind the national average of 90%. And of the 12 authorities where the network has been fully restored (or even grown), half have seen demand exceed pre-Covid levels. Not bad, considering there was also a decade of decline following the recession. As the old saying goes: build it and they will come.
Of course, there’s more than one way to define ‘success’. If a network is running 80% of its pre-Covid mileage and carrying 80% of its pre-Covid passengers, isn’t that enough? Wouldn’t more bums on seats just be a bonus? I would contend it’s not as simple as that – and that our aspirations should be higher. If the 20% gap translates to more traffic congestion, I’d say that counts as failure, not success.
Even with incentives such as the English fare cap or free travel for under-22s in Scotland, frequency and availability are among the main factors which determine whether public transport flourishes. Time is the most precious resource any of us has. If we want to get more people on board – whether that’s current users travelling more often, lapsed users coming back, or new users trying it out – give them enough options to make that choice easier. These ‘temporary’ timetables have lasted long enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marc Winsland is principal consultant – bus operations at SYSTRA. He was previously commercial manager at bus operator Xplore Dundee.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
The missing buses of Britain
by Passenger Transport on May 30, 2025 • 9:21 am No CommentsPassenger numbers have returned faster than bus services in the period since Covid. Are bus operators getting the balance right?
2025 is my 10th year working in the bus industry. It also marks five years since the pandemic began and changed so many things so quickly. That means my career so far can be evenly divided into BC (Before Covid) and AD (Anno Differentia). My definition of ‘normal’ is quite different from that of my older and more experienced colleagues – and probably worlds apart from those who came in after me.
The pandemic itself was just one of the disruptive events of the last half-decade. It led to lasting changes in the way we work, shop and socialise, reducing the need to travel. It inspired the ‘Great Resignation’, where many people in their late-50s and early-60s (a cohort overrepresented in bus depots and bothies up and down the land) took early retirement to enjoy more time with their families and hobbies. That was swiftly followed by the war in Ukraine, which, among other things, sent the costs of fuel and energy sky high and triggered a cost-of-living crisis. Brexit also kicked in officially in 2021, which hit the haulage sector especially hard and resulted in an army of professional drivers swapping buses for lorries. Timetables and reliability were consequently battered by a protracted shortage of bus drivers, and operators had to offer generous (read: expensive) pay rates to get new people in the door and stop others from eyeing the exit.
Suffice it to say: our industry has been put through the wringer once or twice in the AD era.
One of the scars it still bears is a shrunken network. Department of Transport data can be sliced and diced in all sorts of ways, but the most recent figures show that, across Great Britain (outside London), network mileage in 2023/24 was just 84.6% of 2019/20 (pre-Covid) levels. This is outstripped by patronage, which had a 90.5% recovery rate. I accept that a chunk of the mileage drop is due to the coincidence of budget cuts, leading to the withdrawal or reduction of many subsidised services (especially in rural areas). But commercial and urban networks have been significantly pared back as well. For instance, only 76% of mileage has been restored in Hull, 64% in Blackpool, and just 50% in Milton Keynes. Conversely, mileage on the rural Isle of Wight is fully restored, and Southern Vectis reports that patronage – including 9-in-10 pensioners – is bouncing back.
Where I live, in Dundee, it was once typical for the core services to run every 10 minutes on weekdays (with a couple even running every 7-8 minutes). Now, the standard is every quarter-hour, with just one service, the 22, running every 12 minutes; even with that slight boost, our flagship route remains a diminished version of its former self. Across the rest of the city, thousands of passengers must make do with reductions of up to 50%.
Mind you, that’s not to say the buses aren’t busy. Far from it. My local bus is the 17: a cross-city route which serves some of Dundee’s largest housing estates, a dozen schools, the university, the city centre, three district centres, and several supermarkets before terminating at Ninewells Hospital. In the absence of a higher frequency, single-decks were a bit of a squeeze – especially at peak times. That’s why it was such a relief when a fleet of new electric Yutongs arrived in April: it meant the double-decks previously allocated to the 22 would be cascaded onto the 17 – which, until that point, was the only core service still squeezing its passengers onto single-decks.
If we can’t have better frequency, we’ll take extra space as a stopgap. Because greater capacity – whether it’s more buses or bigger buses – benefits operational efficiency as much as passenger comfort. Adding 30 seats to every journey means we don’t have to climb over each other to get on and off the bus. That, in turn, improves punctuality by reducing those pesky dwell times.
The 15-minute timetables were supposed to be “temporary adjustments” when they were introduced at the height of the driver shortage… in February 2022. The update to that effect is still on the website to this day. It optimistically says, “As we ramp up recruitment efforts, we’ll add journeys to our busiest routes just as soon as new drivers can be deployed behind the wheel.” It’s now been three years, all timetables except one have remained stagnant, and prices have risen four times since then (no fare cap on this side of Hadrian’s Wall!).
This isn’t unique to Dundee. There are examples of network shrinkage the length and breadth of this island. Not only does this foster mounting frustration with a privatised market, failing to restore mileage also risks impeding the recovery of patronage – and revenue. Running services with bigger gaps makes the commercial proposition so much weaker. It means working harder to plan a journey. It means waiting longer at the bus stop. It means slower journeys. It means being crammed in like sardines. And, fundamentally, it means paying more for less. Hardly an enticing sales pitch in the quest for modal shift.
If bus services only (barely) satisfy those who really need to use them, they will never attract those who have a choice in how they travel. Buses need to be convenient enough to compete with cars, otherwise we’re capping our own potential. Can you imagine any other industries voluntarily doing that to themselves?
Recovery rates vary significantly across the country, as does the size and strength of networks compared with their pre-Covid iterations. The graph shows a positive correlation between how well passenger numbers are doing and how much distance the network covers. There are outliers and a couple of curious oddities, yes, but the trend is clear: if you want more people to use your buses, give them more buses to use.
My foray into DfT data also found that the passenger per kilometre ratio reached 1.44 last year. That’s the highest it’s been since 1996, the year I was born. In the decade and a half after deregulation (that is, between 1985 and 2000), the ratio plummeted – by 46% from 2.49 to 1.35 – at the behest of newly unleashed commercial companies, which decided that forcing fare-paying customers to sit on each other’s laps was bad for business. Once optimised, the pax/km ratio held steady, averaging around 1.37 – and never exceeding 1.40 – for more than a quarter of a century. Until now.
This sudden jump came about because networks have failed to keep pace with the numbers of people trying to use them. Between 2023-24, patronage outside London grew by 11%, whereas mileage barely budged at all: a miserly 0.2%. That won’t hold forever. Famously, even the numbers who ‘rely’ on buses are ever-dwindling, trending downwards for 70 years. A so-called captive market isn’t a hostage situation; people will seek out alternatives if they’re fed up with subpar service. Those alternatives could be driving, walking – or simply avoiding the bus unless absolutely necessary. Do we really need to keep excavating just to see how deep rock bottom really is?
As ever, cost is the biggest hurdle operators face, and it’s been exacerbated in recent years by the events I outlined earlier. This, by and large, is the reason given for keeping services scaled down forevermore. A charitable assumption might be that decision-makers have become accustomed to a ‘new normal’ and don’t expect it to change much; it’s an industry well versed in managed decline, after all. A realist might say it’s risky to spend more with no guarantee it will pay off. And a cynic might argue that some operators out there are content to stuff more people onto fewer buses because it squeezes out a few extra pennies of profit. But if that’s the aim, they’re unwittingly shooting themselves in the foot.
So, what comes first: the bus, or the passenger? The correlation graph suggests that courage – and generosity – are rewarded when it comes to stimulating growth. Of the 75 authorities with shrunken networks, 67 also failed to recover passenger numbers to 100%; in fact, 45 of them lagged behind the national average of 90%. And of the 12 authorities where the network has been fully restored (or even grown), half have seen demand exceed pre-Covid levels. Not bad, considering there was also a decade of decline following the recession. As the old saying goes: build it and they will come.
Of course, there’s more than one way to define ‘success’. If a network is running 80% of its pre-Covid mileage and carrying 80% of its pre-Covid passengers, isn’t that enough? Wouldn’t more bums on seats just be a bonus? I would contend it’s not as simple as that – and that our aspirations should be higher. If the 20% gap translates to more traffic congestion, I’d say that counts as failure, not success.
Even with incentives such as the English fare cap or free travel for under-22s in Scotland, frequency and availability are among the main factors which determine whether public transport flourishes. Time is the most precious resource any of us has. If we want to get more people on board – whether that’s current users travelling more often, lapsed users coming back, or new users trying it out – give them enough options to make that choice easier. These ‘temporary’ timetables have lasted long enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marc Winsland is principal consultant – bus operations at SYSTRA. He was previously commercial manager at bus operator Xplore Dundee.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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