“Copy London” has been the mantra of the new breed of—mostly Labour—metro mayors in the major cities of the Midlands and the north. And it is leading to a transformative public transport policy at least as important as the growth of rail and the introduction of electric vehicles: namely, the renaissance of buses.
The combination of increasing car ownership, high bus fares and steadily worse service levels saw bus usage plummet across Britain over the last generation. Except in London, where things were done differently to the rest of England. Bus usage escalated by two-thirds in the capital from the late 1990s to the mid-2010s. And having recovered from its Covid decline, London bus travel is now at its highest level since the 1950s.
Far more Londoners use buses than travel by tube, although tube and rail travel have also rocketed over the last 20 years. A large majority of Londoners now use the bus at least once a week, whereas nearly half of all Londoners households do not own a car, rising to two-thirds in inner London where public transport is at its best. Outside London, fewer than one in five households do not have a car. There were more bus journeys last year in London than in the rest of England.
Obviously London is unique in its size, density and traffic congestion. But it is also true that London’s policy on buses since the 1980s has been the diametric opposite of the regime outside London.
Whereas Thatcher deregulated bus services and bus fares outside London, in London regulation was never abandoned. Then came Ken Livingstone as London mayor from 2000 to 2008, who practically doubled the bus fleet and the public subsidy for buses at the same time as he introduced a congestion charge in central London. He also capped daily public transport fares through a new electronic Oyster card, which made it far easier to use buses and tubes in the capital.
Beyond London, even in the major cities, virtually none of these reforms took place in the years after 2000. There was no major investment in bus expansion, there were no congestion charges on cars, there were no fare caps and there were no equivalents of the Oyster card. The only major national subsidies were for pensioners, and across much of the country buses became largely a service for the elderly.
Now all that is changing. Andy Burnham has led the way in Greater Manchester, with his yellow “Bee Network”, modelled on the red London buses, with regulated routes, more services, electronic ticketing and fare caps. Other city mayors are looking to follow suit. Meanwhile, the Sunak government—under pressure from city mayors in particular—capped all England single bus fares at £2, which, while higher than London’s £1.75, was a revolution in policy and restored a large subsidy for working-age bus travellers in England for first time in decades.
Bizarrely, there was nearly a major step backwards at the start of the Labour government. The Sunak subsidy for the £2 capped fare was only in place until this December—for obvious electoral reasons—and it looked as if it was to be abandoned thereafter in Rachel Reeves’s budget. But the English mayors got agitating again and she maintained enough subsidy for a nationwide £3 cap. Burnham has since announced that he will keep the £2 cap in Manchester thanks to other funding for cities announced this week—and the other big city mayors are likely to follow suit. It will be hard for Labour mayors—and the government—to abandon these caps hereafter.
So across the cities of England a new age of the bus beckons, making them a crucial bit more like London each year.
