BusAndTrainUser Verify

Thursday 17th July 2025

Regular blog readers will appreciate I couldn’t resist giving last week’s media reports about the bus route costing a £180 subsidy per passenger journey in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority area the BusAndTrainUser Verify treatment.

Not that I disbelieved for one moment the veracity of the claim as it came straight from Appendix A of an internal report considered at last week’s meeting of the Authority’s Transport Committee to which a number of blog readers had kindly sent me a link (many thanks Paul, Kathleen and Bill).

They knew I’d be interested to read the report updating councillors on how the tendered bus network was doing, not least because it reviewed all the bus routes supported by the Authority including Tiger On Demand DRT operations to which there was a classic quote justifying the reported 1.53 passengers per hour being carried as comparing “well with national and international benchmarks for Demand Responsive Transport” – ie it’s as bad here as everywhere.

Before continuing I must give credit to the Mayor and his team for regularly publishing all this information and making it available to the public – a level of transparency many other Authorities could usefully follow.

But publishing a long spreadsheet detailing numbers of passenger journeys and subsidy paid for every bus route inevitably leads to a ranking of least to most (or worst to best, depending on how you look at it) and the media just love highlighting anything that makes for a good headline. (I’ve only screenshot a few lines in the above spreadsheet image – the full details are here)

Exactly the same thing happened in December 2023 when a similar review highlighted route 7A in the Duxford area was costing £250 per passenger to keep going – you’re welcome to reread my blog report of a journey I took on that route via this link.

That route doesn’t appear on the spreadsheet this time possibly because it’s interworked with another bus route so the figures have been combined.

This time’s top of the league for subsidy is Wednesday only shopper route 15 offering one off peak return journey between Haslingfield and Royston which has captured the headlines with its £180.32 per passenger journey price tag, and as I explain shortly it’s double that cost for each person travelling – an eye watering £360 per passenger using the route each week.

Among the media coverage was the BBC’s report confirming “the Authority was working with the bus operator to understand why passenger numbers on the once-weekly number 15 bus had dropped from 400 to 281 in a year”.

That reduction coupled with the amount paid to operator A2B Travel Group increasing by £28,000 to £50,668.61 has led to the huge subsidy per passenger journey which previously was a more modest (comparatively speaking) £56.93.

Let’s look in more detail at these quoted figures.

Taking the 281 passenger journeys per year and dividing by 51 (as being the assumed number of days the route runs in a year – no service Christmas/New Year week) makes for 5.5 passenger journeys per week so bearing in mind it’s a safe assumption each passenger will make two journeys each time (travelling into Royston and back home again) that makes on average for two passengers travelling on 10 of the 51 weeks (ie 40 journeys – 20 into Royston and 20 back) and three passengers travelling on the other 41 of the 51 weeks (ie 246 journeys). Which more or less comes to the 281 journeys quoted.

The previous year apparently saw 400 passenger journeys which would indicate possibly three passengers travelling on 10 of the 51 weeks (ie 60 journeys) and four passengers travelling on the other 41 of the 51 weeks (ie 328 journeys). That comes almost to the 400 journeys quoted.

So although the report makes out there’s going to be much analysis of the data and discussions with the operator to establish what’s behind the reduction in passengers (and increase in subsidy per passenger) I suspect the explanation is something very simple like one of the three or four regular passengers who use this bus route has moved away or possibly died.

Having established that, I set out very early yesterday morning to take a ride on route 15’s weekly Wednesday outing to see whether I’d be joining maybe two or three others and diplomatically ask how everyone is and if someone is missing and why.

As you can see from the timetable above, the bus leaves the Cambridgeshire village of Haslingfield at 09:15 which is a bit tricky to get to from Sussex but I worked out a way to reach the next village served on the route, Barrington, by the bus departure time of 09:19 with only a modest taxi ride involved.

Sadly the best laid plans didn’t quite work out with an unannounced road closure on the way preventing the taxi from reaching Barrington without a lengthy diversion, so instead the taxi driver made for a village further along the route – to Bassingbourn (adjacent to the oddly named Kneesworth) – which we reached in plenty of time for the bus and is reassuringly also served by another bus route (albeit only a five journey a day one – route 17) which is always handy to have as a backstop when relying on once a week bus routes from isolated villages.

I’ve shown the route taken by route 15 on the above map. It was due to reach Kneesworth at 09:50 from where it does a double run to serve Bassingbourn.

I positioned myself in Bassingbourn High Street in good time at 09:40 and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

No bus tracking was showing on the bustimes.org website so by 10:10 as a bus on route 17 was due (and that was tracking) which would also take me to Royston (albeit via a longer route) I decided the thought of waiting in vain for a bus that may not be coming was too much to bear for the sake of a blog and hopped on the anonymous 17 (there really was no destination blind showing, nor any A2B Travel company logos) and gave up on the 15.

I rang AtoB Travel but “all our team are busy” so sent a message via the company’s website which so far hasn’t received a reply. I’ll update readers when I do hear back.

Maybe unreliability of service – either excessive late running or non operation is a factor explaining the one passenger drop off?

Or maybe it’s the complete dearth of information about the route.

I did find the timetable on Hertfordshire’s Intalink website (even though just a smidgen of the route near Royston is in that County) and couldn’t find anything on the Combined Authority or Cambridgeshire County Council’s website nor is the route’s listed on A2B Travel Group’s website…

… and certainly in Kneesworth and Bassingbourn none of the 12 bus stops I walked past had any information at all.

You’d be hard pressed to know they were even bus stops in some cases.

It’s attention to things like this which are crucial. It doesn’t matter who’s in control – franchised, enhanced partnership or deregulation, if you don’t tell passengers when and where buses go, you won’t carry anyone and subsidy levels will continue to reach unsustainable levels.

And that was how this blog was going to end, but just as I was finishing writing it up last night ready for uploading on Thursday morning came another BBC News Report in which Mayor Paul Bristow is suggesting three bus routes (including the 15) be abandoned with the money saved paying for the continued operation of routes 9 (Littleport via Ely to Cambridge) and 31 (Ramsey to Whittlesey) which Stagecoach has announced it’s withdrawing from the end of next month as neither are viable any longer.

The Mayor is proposing to a meeting of the Combined Authority Board next Tuesday that routes 8A (March to Cottenham) and the 15 be sacrificed along with the south Cambridgeshire Tiger on Demand service to save around £531,000 a year which would be redeployed to save routes 9 and 31.

The assessed financial implications are set out in the report as follows.

It’s perhaps not surprising the Authority ranks routes 9/X9 and 31 as a higher priority than routes 8A and 15 (see further extract from the report below) to say nothing of the South Cambridgeshire Tiger on Demand which was only introduced six months ago and seems to already be regarded as a hopeless basket case. Perhaps it’s finally dawning on those having to make decisions that when funding is limited it needs to be channeled where it will be most effective and not frittered away on flippant luxuries such as DRT.

Regarding discontinuing route 15, the report states it “has been in place for a significant amount of time and has been re-tendered on numerous occasions. The service links up communities between Royston and Haslingfield via Bassingbourn. The route 17 does cover a number of locations on the 15 but the removal of the 15 would remove direct links to Royston from Haslingfield, Orwell and Wimpole”.

If the Mayor’s proposal goes ahead route 15 won’t be much missed. Indeed, based on my experience yesterday, it looks as though it’s already expendable.

Roger French

Summer blogging timetable: 06:00 TThSSu

PS For those interested here’s the report’s observations about routes 9/X9 and 31.