Bus demand grows by 7.7% in 2023/24

Recovery in all areas, but Wales lags behind badly despite strong growth

Bus patronage in Great Britain grew strongly during the last financial year, but numbers remained well short of pre-Covid levels, according to the latest bus statistics published by the Department for Transport (DfT). They show that demand rose by 7.7% during the year end compared with the previous period. You can read more detail and analysis in our article "Overall bus demand up 7.7% in varied picture".

The DfT’s figures put total demand during year at 4,035 million passenger journeys, compared with 3,745 million in 2022/23. However, the total remained 15.7% below the 4,787 million carried in 2018/19, the last full pre-Covid year.

The figures show that demand rose in all parts of the country, but the proportions and the shortfall against 2019 varied widely between the sectors. Strongest growth was Wales, 17.4% up, but still almost 30% below 2019. In Scotland, passenger numbers grew by 11.2%, taking demand to within 10.8% of pre-pandemic levels. The English Shires number grew by 11.1% but remained 15.2% short. The Metropolitan areas enjoyed lower growth of 8.8%, leaving them 16.4% short of full recovery. In London, growth was the lowest in the country, at just 4.7%, leaving a shortfall of 15.9%. 

Comment

There can be few in the country who did not welcome the news of the growth in demand for bus services across the country during 2023/24. An extra 290 million journeys has to be good news for everybody.

However, the bad news is that a further three-quarters of a billion was still missing – the number needed to get the market back to where it was in 2019. Not of course that the 2019 total pulled up any trees, having fallen by more than eight per cent during the previous five years.

The lack of a recovery in concessionary travel by elderly and disabled people is a particular disappointment, leaving the total some 31% short of pre-pandemic levels.

The strong recovery of demand in Wales will be particularly welcome – after a period in which demand fell further and recovered more slowly than anywhere else in the country. Even now, there’s a long way to go – despite double-digit increases during the year, fare-paying passengers remained 25% below 2019 levels, whilst elderly and disabled people needed to make 40% more journeys to make a full recovery.

Meanwhile, north of the border, the cash-strapped Scottish Government now finds itself paying the fares of 53% of all its bus users at fixed and negotiated reimbursement rates – leaving the other 47% to stump up the cash to pay for rising input costs and falling bus speeds. No wonder only 1.6% more paying passengers were interested in coughing up.

There seems to have been more progress since March. The DfT’s weekly Covid Transport Use statistics compare demand with the same week in the pre-pandemic period. They show that demand on bus services outside London was averaging in the mid-nineties during September and October, and reached an average of 97% during one week at the beginning of October. No comparable figures for London have been published since August.

The hope must be that this revival can be sustained and actually move forward into positive territory over the next few months, assisted by the additional funding announced in the budget last month.