The results are in …. for the Rural Mobility Fund

Thursday 22nd January 2026

It’s been a long time coming, but just before Christmas, the DfT published the final report evaluating the effectiveness of its £19.4 million Rural Mobility Fund.

That Fund, launched in March 2021, spearheaded 19 DRT schemes in 15 Local Authority areas across England each funded for a two to four year period and many of which have subsequently continued with Bus Service Improvement Plan funds. An Interim Report was published in October 2023 but by then only seven schemes had got going and some of those were still in their infancy leading to fascinating results including Essex’s DigiGo scheme carrying the grand total of 0.14 passengers per hour.

This Final Report, dated September 2025, covers all 18 of the 19 intended schemes with one, in Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness, yet to start. It’s been compiled by a consortium holding a contract for the DfT for “Provision of Evaluation Research Support for Local and Regional Transport Analysis” which includes the University of Westminster and University of the West of England and provides an extensive review of each scheme. Despite the length of time that’s elapsed the analysis is based on data only up to September 2024. Nevertheless it paints an interesting picture of how DRT performs after a much more scientific and objective analysis than my sporadic random journey experiences over the last few years can ever achieve.

This Final Report is described as phase 1 with a phase 2 promised as a follow up which “is being conducted separately and will undertake impact and value for money evaluation to supplement the findings of phase 1 with a more in-depth assessment of the outcomes and impacts of the pilot schemes.”

There’s a myriad of tables and graphs in the Report with the most relevant setting out numbers of passengers using each service, revenue, and utilisation of vehicles, especially as in many cases these results are after two, three or more years operation, although the Report does make the point numbers are improving over that time in a number of cases while others have levelled off.

There’s a wide variety of schemes analysed ranging in geographic size from four square miles (Mansfield) to 337 square miles (North Lincolnshire); from schemes involving one minibus (North Cotswolds and Swaffham, Norfolk) to others involving six (High Wycombe and north west of Chelmsford). Altogether 55 minibuses have been involved. Interestingly the average percentage of journeys made with concessionary fares across the 18 schemes was the same (26%) as for local bus services in English non-metropolitan areas.

Overall, 87% of journeys were booked using mobile apps with phone bookings on 11% and the small balance on websites.

Ignoring North Lincolnshire which was an outlier, the average advance booking time was 2.7 days with longer lead times typically associated with concessionary fare journeys and phone bookings indicating an important user base of the services being less happy using technology to book their travel.

Here’s a summary of the 19 schemes, with their Rural Mobility Award amount, duration and start date.

After that preamble, here are the results.

Passengers

The most used scheme of the 18 is Buckinghamshire’s PickMeUp in High Wycombe with 3.9 passenger journeys per vehicle hour for the latest reporting period (six months to September 2024) with the Staffordshire scheme in the rural area north of Ashbourne the least used at 0.9 passengers per hour. Nine schemes managed between one and two passenger journeys per hour with five between two and three, and three (Cheshire West and Chester, Nottinghamshire’s West Rushcliffe and Wiltshire) achieving between three and three and a half passengers per hour.

Revenue

Revenue per passenger is slightly complicated by eight schemes being within the £2 fare cap and others not. For the whole Rural Mobility Fund period up to September 2024 total revenue from 823,490 passengers was £1,654,530 representing £2.01 per journey. The Report makes the point “if the £2 fare cap was not in place, fares would have been higher, which could increase revenue per journey, but may have reduced the number of journeys taken.”

Unfortunately the Report doesn’t include any information about operating costs for the schemes, which is a rather unfortunate omission, which in my judgement makes for a somewhat incomplete evaluation. Perhaps that will follow in phase two when value for money is considered, but for now, if we divide the £19.4 million Rural Mobility Fund by the 823,490 passengers who travelled up to September 2024 it gives a subsidy of £23.55 per passenger journey.

Vehicle utilisation

One of the challenges of DRT schemes is to minimise empty running between passengers being dropped off and wherever the next pick up is located. This is particularly pertinent to schemes across a wide geographic area. The Report sets out an “empty running ratio” for each scheme ranging from 0.45 to 1.09 with a mean value of 0.77 indicating 77 miles are driven empty for every 100 miles with a passenger on board. Four schemes (Essex, Norfolk and Nottinghamshire’s Mansfield and West Rushcliffe) have ratios of 1.0 or higher indicating more miles are run without passengers than with passengers. The 0.45 lowest ratio was achieved by Hertfordshire and Warwickshire with Leicestershire just above on 0.52 and North Lincolnshire on 0.57 which isn’t bad as it’s also the largest geographical area covered.

Unfulfilled bookings

Another key metric, and one I’ve found personally exasperating over the years, is what’s called “unfulfilled bookings” – both passengers being unable to book a journey to meet their travel needs (as a bus isn’t available) and booked passengers failing to turn up for the journey. The Report notes “the relative number of unfulfilled bookings compared to fulfilled bookings is an indicator of the capacity of the DRT service to meet demand and of the service experience of users”. Local Authorities were asked to give a breakdown of unfulfilled bookings by reason but it proved challenging to collect such data due to it being held in different ways across different technology platforms.

Notwithstanding that limitation, the Report includes a ratio of unfulfilled bookings to fulfilled bookings across the schemes – a low ratio indicated a higher proportion of bookings being fulfilled, a high ratio indicates a high proportion being unfulfilled. For the latest data collection period (six months to September 2024) Surrey tops the unfulfilled chart with a ratio around 2.2 (the Report doesn’t give precise results and only displays them in a chart) indicating for every journey successfully made, more than double that number were unable to be accommodated and passengers left frustrated. The data shows in Surrey’s case 82% of the 31,140 unfulfilled bookings were for no service or vehicle being available, 15% the passenger cancelling and 3% cancelled by the provider. All in all a somewhat unsatisfactory state of affairs.

High Wycombe, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Wiltshire all had ratios above 1.0 indicating more passengers turned away than being carried with Hertfordshire, and Nottinghamshire’s South Ollerton and West Rushcliffe between 0.5 and 1.0 and the other seven schemes between zero and 0.5.

Here are a couple of the Report’s tables giving more detail of passengers journeys per hour and empty running ratios for each scheme…

… and the ratio of unfulfilled to fulfilled bookings for both the latest reporting period (blue dots) and experience to date (red dots).

Among the Report’s conclusions are…

The Rural Mobility Fund (RMF) pilots have been perceived as successful by the Local Authorities (LAs). This is generally due to the pilots providing an enhanced level of public transport access in the areas they serve. For some LAs the pilot has also provided an opportunity to trial a transport solution that is new to them or would not be feasible without RMF funding. The pilots meant LAs were able to demonstrate to the public and local stakeholders what DRT is and how it can work in practice in their local areas.

….and, crucially ….

LAs and partners involved in the process evaluation felt that there are inherent tensions operationally between maximising revenue, maximising passenger numbers and maximising access to services. It was accepted that the numbers of passengers carried on DRT services in the pilot areas would be unlikely to cover operating costs from ticket income alone. Whilst the level of subsidy might vary between schemes, the aspiration in the longer term was to achieve at least equivalence with fixed route bus contracts.

My conclusion would be this Report shows very clearly that aspiration will always be elusive.

And for evidence of that, you need look no further than Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority’s dalliance with its TigerOnDemand schemes set up with BSIP funding with the latest update provided to last week’s Transport Committee confirming the South Cambridgeshire T10 scheme…

… has a subsidy of £212.22 per passenger journey and sees only 4.25 passenger journeys per day.

Probably just two people travelling out and back, with an occasional third taking a ride.

Roger French

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