By Gemma Osborne
Public transport has faced a decline in both funding and usage in recent years across the UK, and those that have been affected most by these changes have been rural populations. Removal of services and routes are concentrated around bus services, with more than a quarter of routes in county and rural areas being lost in the past decade. Rural areas are receiving only 1/3 of funding to improve services despite experiencing the most route reductions. People from rural areas typically travel more than 40% further than those from urban areas, so any changes to public transport networks has a big impact on rural communities.
Bus use within England and outside London fell by 15% between 2010/11 and 2018/19, while Scotland has experienced a 22% decline since 2007/08. Hence, the merits of any further expenditure to improve such an underutilised system needs to be considered very carefully. The causes of this decline, and the challenges and opportunities it provides will determine whether it is still economically feasible to fund these routes, or whether local authorities have to explore new methods of public transport.
Population trends can be an important factor to consider when determining the path forward for public transport. The UK’s rural population decreased from 21.3% in 2000 to 16.1% by 2020. As more people choose to live in urban areas, there will be a decrease in demand for public transport services outside of cities. This trend, coupled with an increasing rural reliance on cars due to the disappearance of local shops and services, means that there is a declining consumer base for transport companies, partially accounting for the decline in usage of rural services.
The decline in public transport usage has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Passenger numbers took a big hit due to three national lockdowns from 2020-21, dropping by 38% from 2019 to 2022, and have still not recovered. The number of miles provided by commercial operators has also dropped by 15.6% since before the pandemic. As passengers have become accustomed to alternative modes of transport due to lingering fears of safety when using public transport, there is reluctance to return to previous travel routines.
The decline in the use of the rural network has implications for profitability and the cost of provision by councils. Rural areas have a much lower population density than urban areas. This means that any routes have to service a larger area with fewer potential passengers, resulting in lower ticket sales and higher fuel costs. In practice, low profitability constitutes a strong barrier for the entrance of transport companies to rural markets.
Since the privatisation of public transport in the UK, companies must compete for the most profitable routes, leaving little interest for areas outside of cities. When a route is deemed unprofitable by private transport companies, local authorities will intervene to subsidise the service. Without government interference, many smaller towns would have been left with few public transport links due to the profitability issue. As challenges of declining usage persist, there exists a greater burden for councils to provide funding for an increasingly costly service.
Such an approach is unsustainable, as rural and county councils have a 50.7% shortfall in their transport budgets, and the number of council-supported miles has fallen by 60% from 2010 to 2022. Councils have faced large cuts to their financial resources, with budgets falling by 17.5% from 2009/10 to 2019/20, mostly due to reductions in central government grants. The ability of councils to raise funds by other means, such as council taxes was also hindered by The Localism Act (2011), which limited tax raises to 2% annually. The impact of such cuts is further exacerbated by the recent period of high inflation: between September 2022 and March 2023, inflation hit double-digits, and peaked in October 2022 at 11.1%. This means that the spending power of councils has also significantly decreased in a short period of time, making the maintenance of costly public transport networks increasingly unsustainable. Difficult decisions therefore have to be made by local authorities on whether the increasing costs of provision of rural public transport is worthwhile by considering the benefits of such provision, and the consequences of its removal or replacement.
Mobility is an important justification for the provision of public transport. Those who have no alternative mode of transportation available, such as elderly and disabled members of the community, as well as children, are those affected the most by the decline. A considerable proportion of the rural population is elderly, with 25.4% being 65 or older, compared to urban populations, where 17.1% are 65 and over. In 2016, only 57% of the older UK population possessed a driving licence. Without the accessibility that public transport provides, social exclusion issues could occur, which is a major issue especially for the elderly, who struggle with loneliness.
More than 2 million people over the age of 75 in England live alone. This can have severe mental health consequences such as depression. The NHS recommends for those experiencing depression to ‘get out and about’, which would often involve the use of public transport. Local bus travel across England is free for seniors, who can also qualify for Senior railcards to receive a discount on train journeys. This means that although the elderly are just one of the groups most in need of a public transportation system, they do not contribute highly to its running in terms of passenger fares.
Mobility is also important for the development of independence in children and teenagers. Those under 17 are unable to obtain a driving licence in the UK, so the absence of public transport links means that they have to rely on parents/carers for transportation, which severely limits their independence. For those growing up in rural areas, this would block opportunities to gain experience from places outside their communities, as they are constrained by their limited transportation options. Greater provision of public transport for rural areas would enable younger people to gain the same access to opportunities as their peers living in urban areas. This has also been shown to have an impact on rural-urban migration of younger people, who move to cities to be closer to facilities, people and opportunities.
It could be argued that dependency on cars is both a cause and a consequence of the decline of public transport. As cars have become more accessible and necessary for daily rural life, many who would have otherwise relied on public transportation now have their own private means of transportation, making it less of a necessity to the majority of inhabitants. This causes funding for public transport to become less of a priority for local authorities, resulting in the cut to routes which has been occurring. On the other hand, such absence of public transport routes in turn makes the use of cars a greater necessity. This is exacerbated in rural areas, where layouts are less dense and there are longer distances to facilities, which often make walking infeasible unlike in urban areas. This results in 90% of people in rural areas commuting by car, compared to 72% in urban areas.
The implications of such car usage for climate targets has to be considered, with cars and taxis being responsible for 52% of transport emissions in the UK. Due to greater car usage in rural areas, those living outside the city emit 2.5 tonnes a year, compared to 1.4 tonnes for those in the city. The external cost of extra emissions from the increase in private transport will be a factor in the decision to cut public transport routes. Improving public transport for rural communities also provides an opportunity to help achieve climate targets. Those in rural areas who routinely travel long distances, for reasons such as being employed in urban areas, contribute largely to emissions. Improvements of public rural-urban links will not only reduce such emissions, but will make urban jobs more accessible, improving standards of living in rural areas.
It could be argued that for such reasons as mentioned, the decline of public transportation in rural communities is inevitable, and the needs of rural communities must be addressed in more innovative ways than transport subsidisation.
Bus and train drivers are essential to maintaining public transport, but staffing sparsely used rural routes remains difficult to fund, as drivers are one of the largest costs associated with its provision. A solution to this could be autonomous vehicles for bus routes, showcased by the CAVForth service operating on the outskirts of Edinburgh and the Mi-Link service operating in Oxfordshire. By removing the driver, the cost of service is reduced, making rural routes more economically feasible. However, provision and usage would cause public transport to be more costly in rural areas than urban areas.
Demand-responsive transport (DRT) is a viable alternative for rural areas, as it does not incur costs when it is not being utilised like conventional time-tabled services do. It has shown recent promise as an option to replace underutilised bus routes. Milton Keynes introduced the DRT service MK Connect, which replaced bus routes at half the cost. Passengers book via an app, and are directed to a pick-up point, with other passengers being picked up and dropped off along the way. With greater coverage, times and similar fares to those of the services it replaced, DRT is a sound option for rural public transport.. It importantly does not adversely affect the use of conventional bus routes, as passengers are redirected to these routes if such a journey is possible. This makes trips that would have been difficult or impossible via public transport still available. However, such systems are still in their early stages of development, and have much room for improvement regarding areas such as wait times.
The re-imagining of traditional public transport demonstrated by these innovative services could help to solve the issue of high costs for rural public transport routes and also increase its accessibility, increasing the number of people using the public service.
It is clearly indicated that the current conventional public transport system is no longer economically viable due to changes in population demographics causing issues for profitability, increasing reliance on cars, and budget cuts making subsidising such systems infeasible in rural areas. It is important that a system remains in place due to the benefits to mobility, well-being, the climate and economic opportunity it provides. The causes of the decline can be mitigated by innovation in the sector, however the development and implementation of such systems are likely to be very costly. Local authorities will have to investigate whether the benefits outweigh such costs.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own, and may not reflect the opinions of The St Andrews Economist.