England exterior London carried about 1.85 billion local-bus passenger journeys in 2024/25, in contrast with roughly 1.98 billion earlier than COVID-19. Passenger journeys had recovered to 93.3% of their 2019/20 stage, whereas bus service mileage had recovered to 86.0%. Put these two figures collectively and passenger journeys per service mile had been about 8.5% larger than earlier than the pandemic.
That may be a reputable productiveness ratio. Operators have spent years adjusting schedules, controlling prices and concentrating sources the place passengers are travelling. The issue comes when the ratio is handled as proof that the passenger community itself has improved, as a result of the underlying statistics can not reply that query.
I examined the difficulty in How Can a Bus Community Turn into Extra “Productive” by Working Much less Service?, the second article drawn from my broader The Bus Is Not the System report on what Britain and Eire’s lengthy experiment with bus governance can train cities making ready to impress their fleets.
The Division for Transport counts passenger journeys as boardings. Somebody altering buses on the way in which to work will usually seem twice. Service mileage measures the gap travelled by buses offering native service, so dividing the 2 tells us what number of boardings happen for every mile operated. It doesn’t present how far passengers journey, whether or not necessary locations stay reachable or whether or not the connections wanted for full journeys nonetheless exist.
Take into account a night service connecting a residential space with a hospital by a significant interchange. It might carry comparatively few individuals after the height and be costly for an operator to retain. Eradicating it cuts driver hours, vitality use and car put on, whereas the busy trunk route feeding the interchange can proceed to carry out properly. The employee whose late shift can now not be accomplished by bus stops showing within the boarding information altogether.
There are good causes to take away poorly used mileage. Britain’s deregulation expertise produced real stress on working prices, and London achieved main efficiencies by aggressive tendering whereas retaining public management over community specification. Congestion, staffing, upkeep and car utilization all have an effect on bus economics, so asking operators to run each historic route no matter demand could be a poor use of cash.
The tougher choices come up when a service contributes to journeys past the passengers sitting on that exact bus. A feeder could make a high-frequency trunk route helpful. Night protection can decide whether or not somebody can take a job with irregular hours, and a modest cross-town service can get rid of the necessity for a second family automobile. These advantages have limits, and typically a timetable change, higher switch or smaller quantity of focused service can protect a lot of the worth at decrease price.
That is the place metropolitan community planning turns into necessary. Particular person operators are properly positioned to know their autos, labour prices, schedules and fare income. A transport authority has to look throughout operator boundaries and decide what occurs to employment entry, healthcare journeys, schooling and different full journeys when one piece of the community adjustments.
The post-pandemic comparability with London and Dublin illustrates how totally different decisions might be made. London stored bus mileage broadly secure even whereas passenger journeys remained beneath 2019/20 ranges. Dublin expanded scheduled service considerably by BusConnects and subsequently recorded passenger volumes above its 2019 stage. The statistics use totally different definitions and baselines, so they don’t assist a easy rating, however they do present that service provide is partly a coverage resolution somewhat than merely a response to present fare income.
English laws has began to acknowledge the identical concern. The Bus Companies Act 2025 requires authorities utilizing enhanced partnerships to establish socially mandatory providers the place withdrawal may materially hurt entry to employment, important items or social actions. Authorities nonetheless should work inside their budgets and authorized powers, however the framework acknowledges that the income collected by one service is just not an entire measure of its worth.
A fuller efficiency image would maintain the normal working measures and add accessibility. Price per vehicle-kilometre, reliability, service supply and patronage all stay helpful. Alongside them, authorities want to know which neighbourhoods can attain main workplaces, hospitals and faculties inside affordable journey instances, whether or not the journey nonetheless works within the night or at weekends, and whether or not a sensible return journey exists.
Fleet electrification makes these questions extra consequential. Battery-electric buses at the moment are the reference know-how for city transit, and deploying them brings long-lived choices about depots, charging gear, grid connections and contracts. Constructing that infrastructure round a fragmented or poorly specified passenger community can protect in the present day’s institutional boundaries for many years.
That is without doubt one of the central findings of The Bus Is Not the System. Competitors can enhance the effectivity of bus operation whereas the passenger community nonetheless requires an establishment in a position to plan throughout routes, operators, depots and infrastructure. Electrification doesn’t take away that duty; it makes the results of getting it improper tougher to reverse.
The 8.5% enchancment in journeys per service mile tells us one thing helpful in regards to the providers that remained. To know whether or not passengers are higher served, authorities additionally want to know what disappeared with the mileage and whether or not these losses made the remainder of the community much less helpful.
The detailed British statistics are explored in How Can a Bus Community Turn into Extra “Productive” by Working Much less Service?, whereas the governance, contracting and electrification implications are developed within the full The Bus Is Not the System technique report.
