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Have any bus operators returned to pre-Covid levels of revenue or passengers?

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PTR 444

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It is clear that rail has some way to go before fully recovering from the pandemic, and this is played down to the part that working from home is now commonplace and many traditional white collar workers, which the railway relied on, may never return to the office 5 days a week. Buses on the other hand are not so reliant on white collar workers. Their paying patronage is more likely to be made up of shift workers, schoolchildren, shoppers and leisure travellers. As working from home has not affected these groups as much, I am wondering whether certain bus companies have managed to fully recover to pre-Covid levels of revenue or passengers.

Of course, there are still those put off public transport due to the risk of catching the virus, but at the same time, many operators have gone full out with leisure routes to cater to the increased “staycation” market this summer. It’ll be interesting to see whether these routes have helped some operators break even, and whether they have offset any passengers lost during the pandemic.
 
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cnjb8

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For rail, travel for leisure is back to normal but commuting is not. It's probably the same for buses. No doubt the governments ‘don’t use public transport’ advice really did not help.
 
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Eyersey468

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I am told that the company I work for is averaging about 70-75% of pre Covid passenger levels at the moment.
 
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Ianno87

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I'm sure I recall on Twitter that Alex Hornby (of Transdev) reported overall revenue well above 90% of pre-Covid. Presumably lots of route-to-route variation behind that, of course.
 

Robertj21a

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I'm sure I recall on Twitter that Alex Hornby (of Transdev) reported overall revenue well above 90% of pre-Covid. Presumably lots of route-to-route variation behind that, of course.
Alex Hornby has a bit of a habit of 'talking up' just about everything. I hope he's right, even if he may be slightly exaggerating at this stage.
 
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TheGrandWazoo

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Alex has a bit of a habit of 'talking up' just about everything. I hope he's right, even if he may be slightly exaggerating at this stage.
Indeed he has. Sadly, I'm a little sceptical although I think Transdev are probably one of the best placed firms to be able to bounce back.

The more likely scenario is what we are seeing in North Somerset with some quite painful cuts on routes that have been underpinned by decent peak travel and an amount of concessionary passes. Instead, increased working from home is reducing the peak traffic and even concessionary volumes are down.... some pensioners are still fearful about going out too much, some have simply got used to not going out, and then there's a cohort who haven't got passes having qualified since 2020.

Think we could see some fairly chunky cuts as the money lessens
 

johncrossley

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I thought it was assumed that buses will not be commercial for the foreseeable future, hence the compulsory bus partnerships. Have any operators decided to forego the Covid support to avoid joining a partnership?
 

Ianno87

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I thought it was assumed that buses will not be commercial for the foreseeable future, hence the compulsory bus partnerships. Have any operators decided to forego the Covid support to avoid joining a partnership?

I thought the Covid bus operator support scheme was winding down next month?
 

Eyersey468

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I thought the Covid bus operator support scheme was winding down next month?
There's a new scheme coming in to replace it with some kind of funding to next April, I'm sorry I'm not sure of the full details of it.
 
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