Bus journeys are still almost a third below pre-pandemic levels across Britain – and some areas have seen even sharper drops in demand. Passengers made around 776.2 million journeys on local bus services in the three months to December, the latest Department for Transport (DfT) figures show.
That was up by more than half from 510.2 million during the same three months of 2020, when lockdowns or other Covid-related restrictions were still in place. However, it was still far short of the 1.1 billion made towards the end of 2019, which itself followed a gradual decline from 1.3 billion during the same period of 2011.
Wales saw the number of passenger journeys drop from 22.6 million in the last three months of 2019 to 12.1 million in the latest period. That’s a reduction of 46% – the largest proportionally of Britain’s three nations – and was followed by Scotland, where the figure fell by 37% from 88.2 million to 55.2 million.
