Rural bus services face the twin challenges of lower patronage and longer mileage, but it’s not doom and gloom everywhere
Bus patronage has increased in Cornwall (Image: Shutterstock)
As I write this, I’m travelling to Hatfield for the first Quality Rural Bus Conference. By the time you read this, the event will have passed, and the industry will have made a meaningful effort to give rural services the spotlight they so sorely need – and deserve.
The plight of public transport in Britain’s small towns and across its vast countryside is dire: the County Councils Network recently reported that one-in-five rural routes have disappeared since austerity began in 2010. The pandemic harshly compounded that, and the picture has hardly improved since – despite interventions such as BSIP (Bus Service Improvement Plan) funding, the English fare cap, and strengthening the powers of councils to set and enforce standards on routes, times, and tickets.
The Transport Committee made rural connectivity the theme of its first inquiry in this new parliament, demonstrating the importance of this issue. The government, too, is making all the right noises about the social, economic and environmental value of the humble bus. And the local transport minister, Simon Lightwood, has made it clear that he thinks good, reliable links aren’t a luxury but a lifeline.
The question, therefore, isn’t what rural bus services are worth – but whether we’re willing to pay. Even strong urban networks are creaking under the strain of higher costs and less revenue. It’s well known that rural services face the twin challenges of lower patronage and longer mileage, making the numbers harder to stack up commercially.
That’s not to say it’s doom and gloom everywhere. Cornwall, for instance, has seen both its network and demand boom since Covid: mileage and patronage are about 40% higher than 2019 levels. And many rural-focused services perform as robustly as any urban corridor (think of Transdev’s recently electrified 36 between Leeds and Ripon, or the comprehensive network and modern fleet operated by Southern Vectis on the Isle of Wight).
In places where the situation is more thorny than rosy, a growing chorus says that bold reforms such as franchising shouldn’t be the preserve of conurbations like London or Manchester. There is certainly a case to be made there, but I must confess my scepticism about the oft-celebrated ‘gold standard’ that is Jersey. To be clear: the Libertybus franchise is successful (a 47% boost in bums on seats since 2013 is a great achievement, and its profit-sharing contract model is an example well worth following). But I think some people confuse being remote with being rural. The island measures five miles by nine miles, and is home to more than 100,000 people. That gives Jersey a denser population than the cities of York or Peterborough! Not exactly a copy-and-paste job for Cumbria, Herefordshire or Rutland.
That said: I’m all for the embrace of Jersey as evidence that different models are possible in places where the population doesn’t number in the millions. Perhaps it should be a sort of ‘gateway’ for us to get over the psychological hurdle (or pride) of learning lessons from Europe. Whenever our continental cousins are praised for effective, well-used public transport – even in rural areas – there are some who scoff like it’s too foreign and faraway to be relevant to good old Blighty. “What do the Swedes, the Swiss or Silesians know about running buses that we don’t?” Quite a bit, it turns out. Just look at how Switzerland’s PostAuto keeps even the smallest mountain villages connected with hourly services, all day, every day. Or how the regions of Poland, Germany and the Netherlands successfully integrate urban and rural services, allowing for cross-subsidy, unified planning, and seamless, affordable journeys. If we’re fine with taking notes from Jersey, it shouldn’t be a stretch to lift our gaze a little further over the horizon.
More creative thinking at home has led to the promise of franchising pilots in Cheshire and North Yorkshire. It’s still to be determined how they will work (they were only announced last month as part of the Spending Review), but it’s a worthwhile exercise in testing feasibility before other counties follow suit. Mind you, lavishing local authorities with greater powers and more funding – whilst nominally positive – is no good if councils are too strapped for cash and stripped of capacity to do anything useful with them. It’s like waiting for Superman to swoop in when town halls have been pelted with Kryptonite for the last decade-and-a-half. And Cornwall stands as proof that, actually, franchising isn’t the only show in town (…or village). Its partnership model has achieved many of the same hallmarks for a fraction of the cost and time.
The question isn’t what rural bus services are worth – but whether we’re willing to pay
It doesn’t help that the UK is a country riven with divides: between north and south, urban and rural, haves and have-nots. Disparities between cities and counties have always been evident – but they were exacerbated by the recent Spending Review. Case-in-point: non-metropolitan areas account for about two-thirds of England’s population, yet are earmarked to get just a quarter of the capital investments in transport over the next four years. That’s a postcode lottery if ever there was one. And it presents a paradoxical problem for non-metros: yes, it’s true that the sums bestowed by Rachel Reeves are by far the most generous they have ever had, and that should be welcomed, but it’s also true that the Treasury’s allocations will only widen the gap well into the future.
London has long been described as a sort of island within an island; a capital that is very distinct from its country. The solution, as engineered by Whitehall, is to dredge up a new archipelago – with new islands forming in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol and Newcastle thanks to that volcanic eruption of billions in capex. Whilst it’s good for those who get it, it leaves our towns and villages still very much adrift.
Of course, these are but the centres of a new generation of combined authorities: for about a decade, more and more cities have been united with their suburbs to create local government behemoths capable of wielding big budgets, enhanced powers and greater accountability with mayors at the helm.
Combined authorities shouldn’t be seen as a solution just for cities. Indeed, they’ve forged ahead in many non-metros as well, ranging from the East Midlands to Devon, which is good news as it brings rural areas into focus as part of a bigger picture. Rural bus services are often geared, hub-and-spoke style, around major towns and cities – crossing boundaries because people want to and need to. The reasons for this are threefold: because regional economies encourage commuter flows into the nearest urban centre; because hospitals, schools and shops are concentrated there; and because they are the most suitable place for transfers between routes or modes. After all, major towns and cities exist precisely because of that historic convergence of people, products and services.
As a patchwork quilt emerges (with franchises here, Enhanced Partnerships there, and a few municipals scattered throughout), we mustn’t lose sight of the threads that tie the whole thing together: interurban services. These longer-distance routes are fundamental to rural transport – forming a kind of skeleton around which many local services are fleshed – but are threatened by a fragmented landscape. As more areas enact franchising, hard boundaries will multiply across the country as policies governing tickets, schedules and licensing increasingly diverge. The question is how permeable these boundaries are built to be. Provisions are already in place for cross-boundary permit schemes, which is fine in theory. In practice, however, it’s not necessarily a panacea. For instance, if a commercial operator is forced to surrender most of its services to a franchise and isn’t successful in winning them back, they may be left with a rump depot; reduced to little more than an outpost which cannot sustain itself. In such circumstances, the fate of cross-boundary services is by no means assured – but their loss would be painfully felt.
It will likewise be interesting to see what happens in places like Warrington: by 2026, the town will be sandwiched between franchises in Greater Manchester and Liverpool. Sure, its municipal operator has painted its buses yellow and black to pre-emptively blend in with its neighbours, but how will they navigate two different permit regimes? And if the pilot scheme in Cheshire takes off, it will be fully encircled.
And what about borderlands: places where people might live on one side of a boundary, but work, shop or study on the other? This is a fair – and pressing – question because it’s the mayors themselves who made ‘integration’ a central theme of their ambitions. From passengers’ point of view, true integration doesn’t drop dead at an imaginary line on a map. This came to mind when I once rode the Bee Network’s 192 from Manchester to Stockport. The last stop was at Hazel Grove, but I could see that the conurbation continued further into the distance. The people in Poynton are technically residents of East Cheshire, but they’re a stone’s throw away from the boundary, Stepping Hill is their nearest hospital, and they’re closer to shops, services and jobs in Stockport than Macclesfield.
Cue regional strategic planning. It would serve to pool resources, redistribute funding, and share knowledge and skills – achieving economies of scale which make it easier to implement reforms such as franchising (thanks to more competitive procurement), or Enhanced Partnerships (thanks to unified service design). Consider the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport: its territory runs the gamut from Scotland’s biggest, busiest city to a small island served by four buses and a ferry. Combining efforts makes the whole region stronger and more prosperous than its 12 constituent councils would be on their own. More than this, though: beyond working together in their own patches, combined authorities need to pay attention to their peripheries and work with their neighbours.
Whether it’s integrated ticketing, co-ordinated schedules or spending taxpayers’ money more equitably across larger areas, there is a symbiotic relationship between rural services and urban networks. And it’s not just rural areas that enjoy the benefits of collaboration: if bus links to outlying towns and villages were to disappear today, cities would suffer tomorrow – because linking up is critical to levelling up.
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.
Getting it right for rural areas
by Passenger Transport on Jul 25, 2025 • 11:33 am No CommentsRural bus services face the twin challenges of lower patronage and longer mileage, but it’s not doom and gloom everywhere
As I write this, I’m travelling to Hatfield for the first Quality Rural Bus Conference. By the time you read this, the event will have passed, and the industry will have made a meaningful effort to give rural services the spotlight they so sorely need – and deserve.
The plight of public transport in Britain’s small towns and across its vast countryside is dire: the County Councils Network recently reported that one-in-five rural routes have disappeared since austerity began in 2010. The pandemic harshly compounded that, and the picture has hardly improved since – despite interventions such as BSIP (Bus Service Improvement Plan) funding, the English fare cap, and strengthening the powers of councils to set and enforce standards on routes, times, and tickets.
The Transport Committee made rural connectivity the theme of its first inquiry in this new parliament, demonstrating the importance of this issue. The government, too, is making all the right noises about the social, economic and environmental value of the humble bus. And the local transport minister, Simon Lightwood, has made it clear that he thinks good, reliable links aren’t a luxury but a lifeline.
The question, therefore, isn’t what rural bus services are worth – but whether we’re willing to pay. Even strong urban networks are creaking under the strain of higher costs and less revenue. It’s well known that rural services face the twin challenges of lower patronage and longer mileage, making the numbers harder to stack up commercially.
That’s not to say it’s doom and gloom everywhere. Cornwall, for instance, has seen both its network and demand boom since Covid: mileage and patronage are about 40% higher than 2019 levels. And many rural-focused services perform as robustly as any urban corridor (think of Transdev’s recently electrified 36 between Leeds and Ripon, or the comprehensive network and modern fleet operated by Southern Vectis on the Isle of Wight).
In places where the situation is more thorny than rosy, a growing chorus says that bold reforms such as franchising shouldn’t be the preserve of conurbations like London or Manchester. There is certainly a case to be made there, but I must confess my scepticism about the oft-celebrated ‘gold standard’ that is Jersey. To be clear: the Libertybus franchise is successful (a 47% boost in bums on seats since 2013 is a great achievement, and its profit-sharing contract model is an example well worth following). But I think some people confuse being remote with being rural. The island measures five miles by nine miles, and is home to more than 100,000 people. That gives Jersey a denser population than the cities of York or Peterborough! Not exactly a copy-and-paste job for Cumbria, Herefordshire or Rutland.
That said: I’m all for the embrace of Jersey as evidence that different models are possible in places where the population doesn’t number in the millions. Perhaps it should be a sort of ‘gateway’ for us to get over the psychological hurdle (or pride) of learning lessons from Europe. Whenever our continental cousins are praised for effective, well-used public transport – even in rural areas – there are some who scoff like it’s too foreign and faraway to be relevant to good old Blighty. “What do the Swedes, the Swiss or Silesians know about running buses that we don’t?” Quite a bit, it turns out. Just look at how Switzerland’s PostAuto keeps even the smallest mountain villages connected with hourly services, all day, every day. Or how the regions of Poland, Germany and the Netherlands successfully integrate urban and rural services, allowing for cross-subsidy, unified planning, and seamless, affordable journeys. If we’re fine with taking notes from Jersey, it shouldn’t be a stretch to lift our gaze a little further over the horizon.
More creative thinking at home has led to the promise of franchising pilots in Cheshire and North Yorkshire. It’s still to be determined how they will work (they were only announced last month as part of the Spending Review), but it’s a worthwhile exercise in testing feasibility before other counties follow suit. Mind you, lavishing local authorities with greater powers and more funding – whilst nominally positive – is no good if councils are too strapped for cash and stripped of capacity to do anything useful with them. It’s like waiting for Superman to swoop in when town halls have been pelted with Kryptonite for the last decade-and-a-half. And Cornwall stands as proof that, actually, franchising isn’t the only show in town (…or village). Its partnership model has achieved many of the same hallmarks for a fraction of the cost and time.
It doesn’t help that the UK is a country riven with divides: between north and south, urban and rural, haves and have-nots. Disparities between cities and counties have always been evident – but they were exacerbated by the recent Spending Review. Case-in-point: non-metropolitan areas account for about two-thirds of England’s population, yet are earmarked to get just a quarter of the capital investments in transport over the next four years. That’s a postcode lottery if ever there was one. And it presents a paradoxical problem for non-metros: yes, it’s true that the sums bestowed by Rachel Reeves are by far the most generous they have ever had, and that should be welcomed, but it’s also true that the Treasury’s allocations will only widen the gap well into the future.
London has long been described as a sort of island within an island; a capital that is very distinct from its country. The solution, as engineered by Whitehall, is to dredge up a new archipelago – with new islands forming in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol and Newcastle thanks to that volcanic eruption of billions in capex. Whilst it’s good for those who get it, it leaves our towns and villages still very much adrift.
Of course, these are but the centres of a new generation of combined authorities: for about a decade, more and more cities have been united with their suburbs to create local government behemoths capable of wielding big budgets, enhanced powers and greater accountability with mayors at the helm.
Combined authorities shouldn’t be seen as a solution just for cities. Indeed, they’ve forged ahead in many non-metros as well, ranging from the East Midlands to Devon, which is good news as it brings rural areas into focus as part of a bigger picture. Rural bus services are often geared, hub-and-spoke style, around major towns and cities – crossing boundaries because people want to and need to. The reasons for this are threefold: because regional economies encourage commuter flows into the nearest urban centre; because hospitals, schools and shops are concentrated there; and because they are the most suitable place for transfers between routes or modes. After all, major towns and cities exist precisely because of that historic convergence of people, products and services.
As a patchwork quilt emerges (with franchises here, Enhanced Partnerships there, and a few municipals scattered throughout), we mustn’t lose sight of the threads that tie the whole thing together: interurban services. These longer-distance routes are fundamental to rural transport – forming a kind of skeleton around which many local services are fleshed – but are threatened by a fragmented landscape. As more areas enact franchising, hard boundaries will multiply across the country as policies governing tickets, schedules and licensing increasingly diverge. The question is how permeable these boundaries are built to be. Provisions are already in place for cross-boundary permit schemes, which is fine in theory. In practice, however, it’s not necessarily a panacea. For instance, if a commercial operator is forced to surrender most of its services to a franchise and isn’t successful in winning them back, they may be left with a rump depot; reduced to little more than an outpost which cannot sustain itself. In such circumstances, the fate of cross-boundary services is by no means assured – but their loss would be painfully felt.
It will likewise be interesting to see what happens in places like Warrington: by 2026, the town will be sandwiched between franchises in Greater Manchester and Liverpool. Sure, its municipal operator has painted its buses yellow and black to pre-emptively blend in with its neighbours, but how will they navigate two different permit regimes? And if the pilot scheme in Cheshire takes off, it will be fully encircled.
And what about borderlands: places where people might live on one side of a boundary, but work, shop or study on the other? This is a fair – and pressing – question because it’s the mayors themselves who made ‘integration’ a central theme of their ambitions. From passengers’ point of view, true integration doesn’t drop dead at an imaginary line on a map. This came to mind when I once rode the Bee Network’s 192 from Manchester to Stockport. The last stop was at Hazel Grove, but I could see that the conurbation continued further into the distance. The people in Poynton are technically residents of East Cheshire, but they’re a stone’s throw away from the boundary, Stepping Hill is their nearest hospital, and they’re closer to shops, services and jobs in Stockport than Macclesfield.
Cue regional strategic planning. It would serve to pool resources, redistribute funding, and share knowledge and skills – achieving economies of scale which make it easier to implement reforms such as franchising (thanks to more competitive procurement), or Enhanced Partnerships (thanks to unified service design). Consider the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport: its territory runs the gamut from Scotland’s biggest, busiest city to a small island served by four buses and a ferry. Combining efforts makes the whole region stronger and more prosperous than its 12 constituent councils would be on their own. More than this, though: beyond working together in their own patches, combined authorities need to pay attention to their peripheries and work with their neighbours.
Whether it’s integrated ticketing, co-ordinated schedules or spending taxpayers’ money more equitably across larger areas, there is a symbiotic relationship between rural services and urban networks. And it’s not just rural areas that enjoy the benefits of collaboration: if bus links to outlying towns and villages were to disappear today, cities would suffer tomorrow – because linking up is critical to levelling up.
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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