Lots more minis make it cheaper
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• Local bus travel in the UK (outside London) rose by 4% between the financial years 1985/86 and 1986/87, thereby reversing trends which showed a dramatic decrease in recent years — 20% between 1976 and 1981.
Despite the upturn in distance covered, however, there was a 7% fall in the number of passenger journeys outside London between 1985/86 and 1986/87, according to the Department of Transport's BUS and Coach Statistics: Great Britain 1986187 which was published last week.
The report claims that 83% of bus travel following deregulation was on "commercial" services — those run without direct financial support from a local transport authority. The remaining 17% was on subsidised "socially necessary" services run under contract to local authorities.
Operators will have benefited from a drop in operating costs according to the report — costs of operating buses per local vehicle kilometre (excluding depreciation and rebated fual duty) fell by some 7% between 1986/87 and 1986/87: from 88p to 83p. Two factors underlying this flower unit cost were a reduction in the number of staff employed and the greater use of smaller buses.
The switch to smaller buses explains the rise in distance despite the fall in passenger numbers. The report says: "It is noteworthy that in 1986/87 private operators accounted for a much lower proportion of passengers carried than overall distance travelled."