London bus trips down 21%, says NTS

Commuting down by more than half since Covid, 

Trip making by the London public fell by over three per cent in 2023/24 compared with a year earlier, according to new data published by the Department for Transport. Londoners made an estimated 739 trips per person per year (tpppy) by all modes in 2023/24, down by 3.2%, so that trip making in the capital is 10.5% lower than before Covid. The bus market shows a surprising reversal in trip making, down by 21.4%, from 16.0 in last year’s survey to 12.6, leaving bus trip rates more than 30% lower than before the pandemic.

Analysis of responses on people’s reasons for making their journey, trip rates for all purposes except business fell sharply between 2022/23 and 2023/24. Declines included education trips (down 41.5%), commuting (30.8%) and shopping (11.0%). Looking back to 2019, we see a fall in all categories, ranging from 51.7% for commuting to 27.4% for leisure travel. Shopping was down by only 1.2%.

Translating those trip rates into estimated passenger numbers, there is a roughly even split in percentage terms between commuting/business (19.3%), shopping (23.0%), education (20.0%) and leisure (21.8%).

There have been further major shifts in the demographic profile of bus users, according to the survey. The fall in trip rates took place across all age groups though there were some exceptions in individual genders, discussed below. The biggest falls came for people in their thirties (44% down) and twenties (32.5%).

Comparing trip rates with the last pre-pandemic year, the falls range between 10.8% for those under 17 to  46.3% amongst those aged between 21 and 29. Other age groups losing more than 40% of their 2019 trips include those in their thirties and fifties.

Trip rates amongst older people since the pandemic remain depressed. The men showed trip rates down since 2019 by 22.1% for the over 60s and 41.2% for the over 70s, compared with women, down 37.1% and 7.2% respectively.

Comment

This latest update to the National Travel Survey shows how much bus use in London has changed since the Covid-19 pandemic, and now appears to be going backwards – these huge falls in individual trip rates partially disguised by rising population and increased visitor numbers. The falls are reflected in Transport Use statistics published by DfT show that in the first four months of this year, demand averaged 85.9% of pre-pandemic levels, well short of the 88.8% seen during 2024 and 87.9% during fiscal year 2024/25. Between the peak year of 2014 and 2024, it’s starting to look as if the London bus network has transitioned from shining star to basket case in ten short years.

These NTS figures offer a vivid illustration of how bus use is slipping down the hierarchy of many people’s mode choices: they may still be using the bus but less frequently and for different types of trip. Looking back to that peak year in 2013/14, compared with 2023/24, a total of 536 million trips a year have been lost to the network, with the leading causes being a reduction in travel for personal business (153m), falls in commuting (132m), reduced leisure travel (128m), fewer shopping trips (44m) and education trips (44m). Business travel has also reduced.

The heavy falls in trip rates by men across virtually all the age groups is striking, but especially amongst younger people, as is the continued failure of travel by older people to recover, with trip rates falling again over the last year. Of course, it won’t have helped that consumer spending remains below pre-Covid levels and that the overall economic performance since the pandemic has less than spectacular – especially in the capital whose position has been threatened so badly by Brexit, whilst major retail areas such as Oxford Street are only just recovering from the ravages of Covid.

The London bus network has survived the pandemic, as it has other crises in the past, but there is no doubt that it is damaged, and has a markedly different market profile. There are still many uncertainties about the future – prompted not least by a difficult financial performance by the operators and Sadiq Khan’s ambitions to renationalise the operations. But at least the NTS data helps us to understand what is going on.

For a more detailed analysis of these figures, see NTS update shows huge fall in London bus trips

More detail and the full tables in the NTS Mid-Year Update can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-travel-survey-mid-year-estimates-year-ending-june-2024