Deregulated buses anniversary weekend: Part 1

Saturday 25th October 2025

Tomorrow marks the exact day 39 years ago, Sunday 26th October 1986, when Britain’s buses were deregulated outside of London. To mark this anniversary – as by the time we get to the 40th next year, much of the country’s buses in the large conurbations will be under a franchised regime – here’s a weekend blog special looking at examples of what’s happening out on the road in 2025 in today’s blog with a Sunday blog extra tomorrow looking at wider implications and what’s likely for the next 39 years.

The whole point of deregulating Britain’s buses back in 1986 was to reverse the consistent institutionalised year on year decline in passengers and reduce the ever increasing need for public funded subsidy by making it easier for bus companies, including new entrants to the market, to introduce new routes as well as compete and thereby attract more passengers with a better service. I’ll comment more on this tomorrow as it didn’t work out that way in many areas, but for today, let’s take stock, 39 years on, at that vision of competition and the introduction of new services.

In a nutshell, there’s not much head to head competition left in 2025 (as there hasn’t been for a couple of decades) and history shows those areas with what’s generally regarded as a quality bus offering do so as a consequence of bus companies using a monopoly of service provision to introduce improvements to frequencies, vehicle investment, ticket and fare offers and excellent marketing to gain passengers, almost always alongside a pro-active local authority introducing helpful infrastructure. Think Bournemouth, Southampton, Brighton and Hove, Oxford, Nottingham, Reading, Norwich as just a few examples.

But, as recorded in recent blogs, competitive spats do still break out from time to time including most famously in recent weeks in Cornwall as well as earlier in the year between Derby and Burton upon Trent and Lichfield and Tamworth and also, even more recently in Scarborough….

I took a trip up to Scarborough on Tuesday to check out this latest example of head to head competition where Viscount Travel has begun a new route X28 from Scarborough to Pickering including some journeys extended south from there to Malton…

… in so doing treading on the toes of Go-Ahead owned East Yorkshire’s parallel route 128 to Pickering and Transdev’s Coastliner on those journeys onward from Pickering to Malton.

As you can see, the new X28 runs hourly using two buses and has led to East Yorkshire upping its game with a more frequent 128 also now running hourly, rather than two-hourly, between Scarborough and Pickering and a new X3 comprising four off-peak journeys extended on from Hutton Buscel (normally route 3) to Pickering. And in a move typical of such skirmishes, has reduced fares to give “better value” by extending the Scarborough Zone ticket all the way through to include Pickering!

Viscount’s X28 keeps to the A170 and takes just 37 minutes to reach Pickering whereas East Yorkshire’s 128 goes initially via Crossgates, south of Scarborough, taking an hour and the new X3 follows the A170 but also serves the village of Hutton Buscel and takes 50 minutes, so there’s a definite time advantage for Viscount passengers if they want a direct journey.

I sampled Viscount’s 13:20 departure from outside Scarborough railway station through to Malton on Tuesday morning. The bus was on stand in good time with the driver allowing passengers to board from soon after 13:00.

It was preceded by the 13:05 X3 to Pickering which left with five on board – the same number who opted to board Viscount, three of whom travelled to Pickering and two the full route to Malton.

Not huge numbers for the seventh week of the new service, but I see a Viscount Travel journey numbered 126 serves Ryedale School in Nawton which has been incorporated into the timetable thereby adding off-peak in-fill work for this vehicle on the X28 and I guess it’s hoped to stimulate the market for more passengers as well as poach some from East Yorkshire. But as we see, East Yorkshire won’t sit back and watch its passengers drift away and has responded in like kind meaning in the short term, passengers enjoy more and quicker journeys and cheaper fares. But in the long term, evidence from elsewhere shows, competition of this kind isn’t sustainable.

I didn’t spot departure times listed in the bus shelter at Scarborough railway station for the X28, but what is displayed does show what’s being marketed as “Vale Rider” for the 128/X3 by East Yorkshire…

… but I was impressed to see a timetable leaflet available to pick up on board the Viscount bus for the 126/X28…

… and one of the two passengers alighting from the bus at Malton remarked to me how much more convenient it was to have this through bus service as an alternative to the Coastliner bus or train.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the competitive front, the previously blogged about skirmish between Arriva and go-bus between Dartford and Swanley sees a change from this weekend with Arriva withdrawing after today and Go-Ahead taking over the hourly link using a new Kent Country green coloured branding as an offshoot to the Fastrack operation.

The new timetable, which utilises two buses, begins tomorrow, impressively bringing a new Sunday service to the route…

… while go-bus has improved its timetable to include morning peak hour journeys previously shown as separately identified journeys serving Wilmington Academy.

A couple of friends and I took a ride on Arriva’s journey at 12:38 from Orpington to Dartford earlier this month to see what Go-Ahead will be inheriting.

Two passengers made a short local journey within Orpington with one more boarding in the town along with another in St Mary Cray and a third in Crockenhill all travelling through to Dartford.

Once we hit Swanley (one more boarded) on the contested section of route through Hextable (three more boarded) and Wilmington (six more boarded) all travelling through to Dartford making for a reasonable number in the end.

It’ll be interesting to see how the trebling of frequency between Swanley and Dartford along with Go-Ahead’s newly created branding and obvious keen interest in developing the corridor and beyond pans out in the coming months.

And finally for today’s Part 1 of 2 blog, a quick overview of recently introduced new bus routes. There’s been an impressive number over the last 12 months thanks in many cases to Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) funding, but also some notable commercial initiatives I’ve featured in previous blogs including…..

… Carousel’s route 127 between Reading and Maidenhead; Thames Valley’s route 704 between Maidenhead and Heathrow Airport; NorthStar’s routes X22 and X43 to the MetroCentre; Black Cat Travel’s route 2 between Retford and Lincoln; Arriva’s routes X1 and Loop in Milton Keynes; JMB Travel’s route X1 between Hillhouse, Hamilton and Glasgow; uno’s route X10 between Luton and Hatfield are just a few that come to mind with BSIP funded initiatives including Brighton & Hove’s 1X and 3X, Telford & Wrekin’s route 100 (and others) and a welter of new initiatives in Hertfordshire and many other places, including the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority.

Which brings me to Wednesday of this week when I took another ride on one of that Authority’s seven new Tiger branded bus routes introduced in May thanks to funding from the previous Mayor (Nik Johnson)’s £36 public transport precept on council taxpayers.

Readers may recall back in the summer when I sampled these new routes I couldn’t understand the rationale behind route T2 which provides an hourly service utilising two buses linking three of Cambridge’s five Park and Ride sites across the north of the city, notably without serving the city centre.

Five months on, I was intrigued to see whether my previous experience of a solitary ride other than one passenger making a short journey at the western end of the route between Arbury and Eddington would be improved upon.

There were a dozen or so passengers waiting at the bus terminal point when I arrived at the Newmarket Road Park and Ride (P&R) site (on the north east edge of the city) for the midday departure on the T2 but unsurprisingly they were all waiting for one of the frequent buses on route PR2 which whisks them into the city centre.

Taking a bus ride around the northern edge of the city to either the Milton P&R site in the north or the Madingley P&R site in the north west isn’t much of a draw – why would it be? It wasn’t long before we arrived at the Milton P&R site having whisked along the A14…

… and then cut across countryside to Impington where the T2 now provides a bus to the west of the village not served by route 8 which otherwise provides a 40 minute frequency between the main part of the village and neighbouring Histon into the city centre (see above map). However, on the new section of route I didn’t spot any bus stops which rather negates the point of having the new bus route.

Near Arbury we passed the bus heading the other way which also had no passengers on board…

… but, as with my previous journey found a passenger to pick up opposite the Iceland store, having done some shopping, who travelled to the new residential development at Eddington.

She told me she occasionally uses the bus to make this journey so it’s a handy newly provided link for her.

At the terminus at Madingley P&R I had a chat with the driver who admitted it’s very quiet during the day with few passengers travelling but said some students use it at peak times to travel to the college at Impington which is also served by Stagecoach’s route 8 running every 40 minutes.

After a break at the terminus (the schedule has 16-17 minutes layover in every hour) I caught the same bus back as far as Arbury with a couple of passengers making a one bus stop ride in that area who could also catch the more frequent route 8 (which was following us) and another passenger boarding who also looked as though they were making just a short journey home from the shop.

There’s been some new residential development near the Park & Ride site on Newmarket Road but there’s no reason why these residents would want to travel to one of three Park & Ride sites, nor to Impington, Arbury or Eddington the three communities served along the line of route.

Five months on, I’m still struggling to come up with a rationale behind route T2 other than it looks good on a map to have an orbital bus route around the north of the city, even if no-one wants or needs to travel on it.

I’m not sure route T2 being a feature of a deregulated environment would have been something the original architects of the new regime back in 1986 would have envisaged but the last 39 years has been full of surprises of one kind or another with many pluses and many negatives. I’ll touch on more of these in tomorrow’s Part 2 blog.

Finally, those who subscribe as a member to Geoff Marshall’s YouTube channel will know he accompanied me on the T2 on Wednesday as he uploaded on Thursday a “behind the scenes” video of the day – do sign up to become a member if you want to see more.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: TThS with a Su extra tomorrow.