Downward bus trend continues despite post-Covid recovery

The number of bus journeys in the metropolitan areas outside London remains on a downward trajectory, reveal the Government’s bus statistics for 2021/22.

Data shows that the number of bus journeys has fallen from 1.03 billion in 2010/11 to 846 million in 2019/20 (prior to the Covid-19 pandemic) and 584 million in 2021/22.

The number of local bus passenger journeys in England rose by 1.3 billion or 79.6% to 2.8 billion in the financial year ending March 2022. This was, however, still far lower than two years ago where passenger journeys in the financial year ending 2020 for England were 4.1 billion.=

Bus mileage in England was up compared with the financial year ending 2021 by 93.3 million miles or 9.6%. The DfT says bus mileage has been less severely impacted than passenger journeys over the last two years, largely due to the Covid-19 Bus Service Support Grant (CBSSG) and then the Bus Recovery Grant (BRG), which was introduced to keep services running that may have otherwise operated at a loss, or not operated at all.

In the financial year ending 2022, 1.1 billion bus service miles were run in England, a rise of 9.6% when compared with the financial year ending 2021 and 6.1% lower than two years ago.

In England outside London bus mileage saw an increase of 12.7% compared with the financial year ending 2021, but 8.3% lower than in the financial year ending 2020. In London bus mileage saw a small increase of 2.2% compared with the financial year ending 2021 and returned to similar levels as in the financial year ending 2020. London bus mileage has changed very little since the financial year ending 2005, fluctuating between around 285 and 300 million vehicle miles.

Passenger journeys in London accounted for 52% of all passenger journeys made by local buses in England in the financial year ending 2022. There were 1.5 billion passenger journeys made by local buses in London in the financial year ending 2022, an increase of 72.4% compared with the financial year ending 2021. Before the financial year ending 2013, bus use in London increased every year since the financial year ending 1999.

In the financial year ending 2022, 1.4 billion passenger journeys were made by local buses in England outside London, an increase of 88.2%. Prior to this, bus use in England outside London has been on a downward trend since the peak of 2.41 billion passenger journeys in the financial year ending 2009.