An “innovative” bus service in North Yorkshire is costing taxpayers about £4 per passenger journey more to subsidise than traditional timetabled buses, it has emerged.
North Yorkshire County Council’s executive member for transport Councillor Keane Duncan said the latest available figures for the authority’s Yorbus demand-responsive pilot scheme, around Ripon and Masham, showed a “financial mismatch”, despite successful efforts to increase patronage.
Ahead of reviewing data from the trial the council believes there are about ten zones across the county where a Yorbus-style service would be viable to operate.
A meeting of NYCC’s executive was told Yorbus journeys were costing between £11 and £13, which compared with £8 to £9 on routes the county council subsidised in the same area.
Despite the figures, Cllr Duncan underlined his intention to continue developing what he described as an “innovative” alternative to fixed bus services, which he said had been welcomed in the trial area.
He said:
“Passenger numbers are up, loyalty is there, people are coming back and using Yorbus time and time again which is a really positive sign for us.
“Conventional timetabled services may have a lower subsidy, but they operate on a fixed timetable. This means they can only benefit those lucky enough to live along a bus route with a bus stop available to them.”
Yorbus has been heralded as the potential solution to the dearth of public transport in rural areas of England’s largest county.
The success of the pilot scheme is being viewed as crucial by campaigners fighting for rural transport services, particularly after the authority’s £116m bid to the Government’s Bus Back Better scheme was last year rejected in its entirety, with Whitehall officials citing a lack of ambition.
Read more:
- YorBus: Transport chief defends service after ‘blank cheque’ concern
- YorBus: On-demand service’s running costs are twice as much as regular buses
The meeting this week heard transport user groups had recently highlighted concerns about the lack of transport in rural areas.
The concerns follow the executive last summer approving spending nearly £230,000 of taxpayers’ money on trialling its Yorbus demand-responsive bus service for a further year.
They also come three months after Cllr Duncan warned the county’s bus network was “facing a really grave situation”, partly due to rising costs.
The meeting was told the council had relaxed restrictions on using its on-demand bus service since last summer amid fears restrictions were deterring key potential customers and would make the Yorbus unsustainable.
He said the council had expanded Yorbus’s times of operation, the number of villages to which it travels, and, following numerous complaints, introduced the ability to pre-book journeys.
Cllr Duncan said recent months had seen patronage rise by about 30% on the year before.
However, he said the cost per passenger journey on Yorbus, which has been operating in the Masham, Bedale and Ripon area since July 2021, remained relatively high, even compared with journeys on buses with fixed timetables.
Cllr Duncan said the value to residents of Yorbus was greater than traditional buses as it maximised the number of people who could use it – some 40,000 residents in the pilot zone – and was more flexible.
He said the authority would examine the pilot scheme in the coming months, including how to address the high cost per journey.
