Bus passenger numbers in Shropshire fail to recover to pre-pandemic levels

The Campaign for Better Transport said service provision and frequency must be improved to see more people using the bus.

New figures from the Department for Transport show passengers in Telford and Wrekin took 3.4 million bus journeys in the year to March. This was up from 3.3 million the year before, but was below pre-pandemic levels of 3.8 million.

In the Shropshire Council area, passengers took  2.7 million bus journeys, in line with the year before but below the pre-pandemic levels of 4.2m.

Silviya Barrett from Campaign for Better Transport said: "It’s encouraging that once again we’re seeing more people take the bus, helped by the £2 bus fare cap making bus travel more affordable in the past year.

"But to truly see more people using buses more frequently, we need to see a boost to service provision and frequency too.

"We urge the Government to introduce a bus service guarantee in the forthcoming Better Buses Bill, to define a minimum level of bus services in every community and ensure that local authorities have the necessary long-term funding to deliver them."

The figures also showed the number of bus journeys in Telford and Wrekin has fallen by eight per cent from five years ago, while the last decade has seen the number drop by 33 per cent.

The drop in Shropshire is considerably more significant, down 37 per cent from five years ago with a drop of 51 per cent in the last decade.

Nationally, the number of journeys taken has dropped by 16 per cent since 2018-19, which saw 4.3 billion trips taken.

Meanwhile, separate figures from the Office for National Statistics show bus and coach fares in the first three months of 2024 were six times higher than the same period in 1987, compared with a five-fold increase in train fares and motoring costs rising by around three-and-a-half times.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced in October that the cap on single bus fares in England will rise from £2 to £3 from January 1.