Free National Bus Service

Capacity, Costings, and Cross-Country Comparisons

1. Summary of Proposal

This appendix sets out the evidence base for a national programme to double local bus passenger journeys across Great Britain, from approximately 4.0 billion to 8.0 billion trips per year, phased over four years. The service would be entirely free at the point of use for all passengers on local bus routes. This entails both the provision of 4.0 billion additional trips per year on expanded services and the replacement of approximately £3.55 billion per year in existing fare revenue currently collected from passengers on the pre-existing network.

The target of 4.0 billion additional trips per year is not arbitrary. It is the point at which three independently defensible benchmarks converge: matching Germany’s per-capita public transport usage, extending to the rest of England approximately half the bus service intensity that London already enjoys, and restoring national per-capita bus use to levels last seen before deregulation in 1986. When three different methodologies produce the same answer, that answer merits serious consideration.

2. Historical Context: UK Bus Capacity and Decline

2.1 The Scale of Loss

The United Kingdom was once among the most intensive users of bus transport in the developed world. In 1950, London alone recorded 4.5 billion bus passenger journeys — more than the entirety of Great Britain manages today. Nationally, total bus passenger journeys exceeded 16 billion per year in the early 1950s, serving a population of approximately 50 million. By the time of deregulation under the Transport Act 1985, annual journeys across Great Britain had fallen to approximately 5.7 billion, and the decline accelerated thereafter outside London. The most recent official data (DfT BUS01, year ending March 2025) records 4.0 billion local bus passenger journeys across Great Britain, serving a population of 67 million.

This represents a collapse from roughly 320 bus trips per capita in 1950 to approximately 60 per capita today. The decline was not uniform. London, which retained a franchised, publicly planned bus network under Transport for London, experienced a 69 per cent increase in ridership between 2000 and 2010 following sustained investment in frequency, bus priority, and fare integration. The rest of England, subject to the deregulated market created by the 1985 Act, saw continuous decline, with passenger journeys outside London falling by more than a third since 1985–86.

2.2 Key Historical Milestones

2.3 The London Counter-Factual

London’s experience between 2000 and 2014 demonstrates that bus ridership decline is a policy choice, not an inevitability. Under TfL’s franchised model, bus journeys in London grew from approximately 1.3 billion in 1999–2000 to a peak of 2.4 billion by 2013–14. This was achieved through route planning, frequency guarantees, bus priority lanes, integrated ticketing (Oyster), and the congestion charge. The bus fleet grew from around 5,500 to over 8,000 vehicles. By 2024–25, Londoners were making approximately 200 bus trips per capita per year, compared with just 37 per capita in the rest of England. The gap between London and the rest of England — 200 versus 37 trips per capita — is not a demand gap. It is a policy gap.

3. Target Derivation: Why 4 Billion Additional Trips

3.1 Benchmark 1: Matching Germany

Germany recorded 9.86 billion public transport passenger trips in 2025, serving a population of 84 million, equating to approximately 117 trips per capita. The United Kingdom, with 67 million people, currently achieves roughly 85 public transport trips per capita across all modes. Doubling bus trips alone would bring the UK to approximately 145 combined public transport trips per capita — modestly above Germany, but Germany benefits from extensive tram and regional rail networks that the UK lacks, making higher per-capita bus use a structural necessity in the British context.

3.2 Benchmark 2: Extending London-Level Service

London achieves approximately 200 bus trips per capita. England outside London manages 37. The non-London population of England is approximately 47 million. Raising non-London England from 37 to 100 trips per capita would generate approximately 2.96 billion additional trips from England alone. Adding proportionate uplifts for Scotland and Wales, plus moderate further growth within London, produces a national target of approximately 4.0 billion additional trips.

3.3 Benchmark 3: Restoring Pre-Deregulation Per-Capita Usage

In 1985–86, the year before deregulation, Great Britain recorded approximately 5.7 billion bus trips on a population of 56 million — roughly 102 trips per capita. Applying 102 trips per capita to today’s population of 67 million yields 6.8 billion trips. The target of 8.0 billion total trips is modestly above this, accounting for increased spatial dispersion of population, growth of edge-of-town employment and retail, and the healthcare, education and welfare journeys that did not exist at their current scale in 1986.

3.4 Demand Elasticity Evidence

The academic literature on bus demand supports the feasibility of a doubling under the proposed policy mix. Balcombe et al. (2004) report bus service elasticities of 0.4–0.7 in the medium term: doubling frequency generates 40–70 per cent more trips. Fare elasticities are typically estimated at −0.3 to −0.5, implying that halving fares generates 30–50 per cent more trips. The elimination of fares entirely represents a more powerful intervention than any reduction modelled in the standard elasticity literature, because it removes not only the financial cost but the transactional friction of fare payment, ticket purchase, and fare uncertainty. International evidence from fare-free transit systems (Tallinn, Luxembourg, Kansas City) suggests ridership increases of 10–40 per cent from fare abolition alone, even without service expansion.

Germany’s Deutschlandticket provides further corroboration. The introduction of a flat-rate €49/month public transport pass in May 2023 generated a 6 per cent increase in local transport use within a year, with approximately 21 per cent of trips made with the ticket being journeys that would not otherwise have occurred on public transport. Germany achieved this through fare simplification alone, without corresponding service expansion. The UK proposal combines complete fare abolition with simultaneous frequency doubling — a considerably more powerful dual intervention than anything yet attempted in a major European economy.

4. Ridership Projections

The following projections model ridership growth over the four-year phase-in period. They assume a linear ramp in service provision (25% / 50% / 75% / 100% of target capacity) and apply a demand response function in which ridership slightly lags service expansion in early years due to behavioural adjustment, then converges by Year 4. It should be noted that fare abolition is likely to produce a stronger initial demand response than modelled here; the conservative demand response factors below are anchored to service deployment capacity rather than demand appetite.

The demand response factors are deliberately conservative. In Year 1, new routes are assumed to attract only 80 per cent of their eventual steady-state ridership as residents discover services and adjust travel patterns. This is consistent with TfL’s operational experience, where new route introductions typically achieve 80–85 per cent of forecast ridership in their first year. By Year 4, the full demand response is realised. In practice, the elimination of fares may accelerate the demand response curve, particularly for lower-income households for whom fare cost is the binding constraint.

5. Existing Fleet Capacity and Initial Ridership Absorption

A common objection to programmes of this kind is that ridership cannot grow until new infrastructure is in place — that buses must be procured, depots built, and drivers trained before any increase in passenger numbers can be realised. The evidence does not support this. The existing UK bus fleet operates with very substantial spare capacity, and the initial ridership response to fare abolition can be largely absorbed by the network already in service.

5.1 Current Occupancy Rates

DfT data (BUS03, derived from passenger-miles divided by vehicle-miles) report average bus occupancy across Great Britain at approximately 11.8 passengers per bus at any given point in time (2019–20, the most recent pre-pandemic year). This figure varies significantly by area:

A typical UK double-decker bus seats approximately 65–80 passengers; a single-decker seats 40–54. With the national fleet split roughly evenly between the two types (more heavily double-decker in London), a reasonable weighted average seating capacity is approximately 60 seats. Average occupancy of 11.8 passengers on a bus with 60 seats implies a national average load factor of approximately 20 per cent. Even London, with the most intensively used bus network in the country, operates at only around 27 per cent average seat occupancy.

The existing Great Britain bus fleet of approximately 36,000 vehicles is, in aggregate, running at roughly 80 per cent spare capacity.

5.2 Implications for the Transition Period

This spare capacity has a direct bearing on the feasibility of the programme’s early years. Fare abolition is an instantaneous policy intervention: it takes effect on day one, before any new bus has been procured or any new driver recruited. The demand response to free fares — which international evidence suggests could generate a 10–40 per cent ridership increase from fare removal alone, even without service expansion — would fall initially on the existing fleet.

If average occupancy across Great Britain rose from 11.8 to approximately 17–18 passengers per bus (still only 28–30 per cent of seating capacity, and below London’s current average), that increase alone would represent approximately 1.5–2.0 billion additional trips per year absorbed entirely within the existing network. No new buses, no new depots, no new drivers. The existing infrastructure can accommodate a very large initial ridership surge.

This does not mean that investment in new fleet and expanded services is unnecessary. The spare capacity is not uniformly distributed: peak-hour services in London and major cities already operate at significantly higher occupancy, and some routes are genuinely capacity-constrained. Rural and off-peak services, by contrast, may carry only 3–5 passengers per bus. Fare abolition is likely to generate its strongest initial demand on already-busy urban corridors, precisely where spare capacity is thinnest. Network expansion — new routes, higher frequencies, extended operating hours, and service to areas currently without buses — remains essential to realising the full 4.0 billion additional trips.

The point is one of sequencing, not substitution. The existing spare capacity provides a buffer that allows ridership growth to begin immediately upon fare abolition, while the four-year programme of fleet procurement, depot construction, and driver recruitment proceeds in parallel. The critique that infrastructure must precede growth is contradicted by the data: the infrastructure for an initial doubling of average load factor is already in place.

6. Resource Allocation: Four-Year Programme

6.1 Assumptions and Cost Structure

All costings are derived from a single master input (4.00 billion additional trips at steady state). Operating cost assumptions separate driver labour costs from non-driver operating costs to ensure transparent accounting with no double-counting.

DfT BUS04 reports average total operating expenditure of approximately £1.67 per trip across Great Britain. Industry data indicate that driver wages account for 40–45 per cent of this total (£0.67–£0.75 per trip), with the remaining 55–60 per cent (£0.92–£1.00 per trip) covering fuel and energy, vehicle maintenance, insurance and licensing, and management overheads. For new marginal services, non-driver operating costs are modelled at 60–80 per cent of the average non-driver rate, reflecting that some overhead costs (management, administration, back-office) do not scale linearly with service expansion while variable costs (fuel, maintenance, parts) do.

6.2 Physical Resource Requirements

6.3 Capital Expenditure (£ Billions)

6.4 Operating Expenditure (£ Billions)

Under a fully free service, there is no fare revenue to offset operating costs. Additionally, the existing fare revenue of £3.55 billion per year currently collected from passengers on the pre-existing network must be replaced by public funding from Year 1. Operating costs are decomposed into non-driver variable costs (fuel, maintenance, insurance, overheads) and driver labour (wages, recruitment, training), with no overlap between the two categories.

6.5 Combined Fiscal Envelope (£ Billions)

6.6 Steady-State Annual Costs (Year 4 Onwards)

Once the four-year build phase is complete, capital expenditure falls to replacement levels (fleet renewal, depot maintenance) and operating costs stabilise. The annual cost of maintaining the doubled, free national bus service at steady state is:

For context, total identifiable UK public expenditure in 2023–24 was approximately £1,189 billion. A steady-state annual bus programme of £13.8–14.8 billion would represent 1.2 per cent of total public spending, or approximately 0.5 per cent of GDP.

7. Feasibility Assessment: Supply-Side Constraints

7.1 Fleet Manufacturing

The programme requires approximately 8,930 buses per year over four years, representing 2.4 times the current domestic and import supply of roughly 3,700 per year. This is achievable for several reasons. First, the current supply level is demand-constrained, not capacity-constrained: manufacturers have scaled production up and down rapidly in response to orders. Wrightbus expanded from 49 employees to over 2,000 within five years of its 2019 rescue. Second, the requirement represents approximately 3 per cent of global bus production, which exceeds 300,000 units per year. BYD alone manufactures over 70,000 buses annually. Third, a committed four-year order book of 35,722 buses would be transformative for UK domestic manufacturing, justifying investment in expanded production lines at Wrightbus (Ballymena) and Alexander Dennis (Falkirk/Scarborough), with significant implications for regional employment and industrial strategy.

7.2 Driver Workforce

The programme requires approximately 19,850 additional drivers per year. The current training pipeline is estimated at 10,000 per year, so a doubling of throughput is needed. PCV licence training takes 6–12 weeks, meaning there is no multi-year lead time comparable to other skilled trades. The binding constraint is attractiveness: the bus driving workforce is ageing (over 50 per cent aged 50+), predominantly male (90 per cent), and competes with HGV and delivery driving for recruits. The proposed salary of £38,000 including on-costs is competitive but may need to be supplemented with a national recruitment campaign, improved working conditions, and a pathway to career progression in transport operations.

7.3 Depot and Grid Infrastructure

The programme requires approximately 112 new depots per year, equivalent to roughly 2.3 per county per year across England, Scotland, and Wales. This is within normal commercial construction capacity. The principal constraint is electricity grid connection: DNO upgrade timescales of 12–18 months create a lead-time issue that must be managed by beginning depot planning in advance of fleet delivery. Battery storage on-site can mitigate grid connection delays. Total overnight charging load for the expanded fleet at steady state is estimated at approximately 625 MW — roughly 1.4 per cent of UK peak grid capacity and easily manageable with smart overnight charging.

7.4 Summary Assessment

8. Cross-Country Comparison

The following table compares bus and public transport usage across selected countries and sub-national units. It demonstrates that the proposed UK target of approximately 119 trips per capita would place the UK within the normal range for comparable European economies, and well below the levels achieved by the best-performing systems.

8.1 Observations

Germany is the most instructive comparator for the UK. It has a comparable population, a significant rural hinterland, and has recently demonstrated that fare simplification alone can generate meaningful ridership growth. Germany’s Deutschlandticket generated a 6 per cent increase in local transport use within its first year, and approximately 14.6 million active subscriptions by end-2025 — roughly one in six of the adult population. However, Germany has not undertaken the kind of simultaneous service expansion proposed here. The UK proposal goes further in two critical respects: complete elimination of fares (not merely simplification), and a concurrent doubling of service provision.

France achieves roughly 140 public transport trips per capita, significantly above the UK, driven primarily by Île-de-France (the Paris region). Provincial French cities have invested heavily in tram and bus rapid transit systems since the 1990s, supported by the versement transport employer levy. Several French cities (Dunkirk, Montpellier, Aubagne) have already implemented fare-free bus services with ridership increases of 60–100 per cent in the first two years of operation. The French municipal evidence base directly supports the ridership projections in this appendix.

Luxembourg became the first country in the world to make all public transport free in March 2020. While the pandemic confounds clean measurement of the fare-free effect, the policy has been maintained and is politically popular. Luxembourg’s experience demonstrates that fare-free public transport is operationally manageable at a national scale, albeit in a small country.

The Netherlands demonstrates that even in a country with excellent cycling infrastructure and dense rail, bus plays a supporting role at roughly 44 trips per capita. This underlines a structural reality: the UK has less rail and tram coverage per capita than the Netherlands, France, or Germany, and therefore needs bus to carry more of the transport burden.

London remains the most powerful piece of evidence that the proposed national target is achievable. If one city of 9 million people within the UK already achieves 200 bus trips per capita under a franchised, publicly planned model, there is no physical or economic law preventing the rest of the country from achieving half that rate.

Singapore demonstrates the upper bound of what is achievable with full public planning, high frequency, and affordable fares. At 339 bus trips per capita, it shows that bus systems can serve as primary urban transport modes when properly resourced and integrated.

9. References

Balcombe, R. et al. (2004) The Demand for Public Transport: A Practical Guide. TRL Report TRL593. Transport Research Laboratory.

Cats, O., Susilo, Y.O. and Reimal, T. (2017) ‘The prospects of fare-free public transport: evidence from Tallinn.’ Transportation, 44(5), pp. 1083–1104.

Confederation of Passenger Transport (2023) Bus and Coach Industry: Key Facts. CPT UK.

Department for Transport (2024) Annual Bus Statistics: Year Ending March 2024 (Revised). DfT Statistical Release.

Department for Transport (2025) Annual Bus Statistics: Year Ending March 2025. DfT Statistical Release.

Department for Transport (2025) Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2024 Domestic Travel. DfT.

Department for Transport (2024) National Travel Survey: England 2023. DfT Statistical Release.

Dellheim, J. and Prince, J. (eds.) (2018) Free Public Transit: And Why We Don’t Pay to Ride Elevators. Black Rose Books.

HM Treasury (2024) Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2024. CP 1131.

Loder, A. et al. (2024) ‘Germany’s Newest Fare: The Deutschlandticket — First Insights on Funding and Travel Behavior.’ Transportation Research Record.

Office for Budget Responsibility (2024) Economic and Fiscal Outlook: October 2024. OBR.

Transport for London (2024) Travel in London Report 16. TfL.

Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen (2026) VDV Jahresbilanz 2025. VDV.