As of March 2025, there were 30,410 buses in operation by local bus companies across the UK. Never mind waiting ages for a bus and three showing up at once, if that lot lined up at your bus-stop, the queue would stretch back to Kelso (for readers in Kelso, please insert Tewkesbury or another far-flung place of your choice here).

Based on the latest population estimates, these numbers mean there is one bus for approximately every 2,280 people in the country.

Now, if 2,280 of us tried to squeeze on the No.42 to Blackpool via Garstang, I daresay it would be a bit of a tight squeeze, no matter how many disembarked to enjoy the sights and sounds of Poulton-le-Fylde en route. That’s before we get to luggage, dogs, bikes, and any of the other wonderful things passengers might want to take with them.

Luckily, buses run (mostly) more than once a day, and not everyone fancies a day treading the boards of the North Pier on a wet Wednesday in the early days of Spring. Also, only around 0.21% of the UK’s population lives in Lancaster and District. Such potential bone-crushing and flesh-pressing overcrowding is thus averted. Phew.

Therefore, there should be more than enough space for those of so inclined to hop on and let the bus deal with the fuss (a phrase that only rhymes if you say the word bus the way I do). And the fact of the matter is, whenever I see said buses, they are not exactly packed to the gunnels. Maybe the appeals of the Fylde Riviera are lost on most people. Or perhaps most of us choose to go by car.

Recently, I welcomed my friend Ben Wakerley back to Lancaster to speak with us on Transforming Tomorrow. I’ve known Ben for more than 25 years – and yet he still came along – and he has always been obsessed with buses. Rather than working in shops or cafes, he had a part-time job as a bus driver when he was a student. It scares me to this day that he was in charge of the safety of hundreds of passengers every day, when my experience of him was as a student radio presenter who once organised a game on on-air Twister that was a chaotic and non-suitable for radio as you might imagine.

Ben is now the CEO of Warrington’s Own Buses, in Cheshire, so he has no responsibility for passenger numbers on the No.42. In fact, he chose to catch the No.1 from Lancaster City Centre to the University instead. He does, however, have charge of a fleet of more than 100 electric buses, one of the biggest such fleets in the UK (only 12% of those 30,410 busses I mentioned earlier were listed as zero-emissions).

Ben’s decades on the buses have taught him a lot about how and why people use public transport, what can be done to boost numbers, and why cars are so hard to dislodge from people’s affections.

Warrington’s Own Buses carry more than six million passengers a year – and most of them seem pretty happy with their service. But Ben is not one to rest on his laurels. He would like more people to eschew cars and use his services. I’m sure part of that is so he can keep his job, but he also recognises the importance of public transport in the sustainability debate.

The problem is that compared to the 30,410 buses, there are more than 34 million licensed cars in the UK. If we discount the approximately 14 million under-17s in the UK who cannot drive, that means there is one car for about every 1.6 people. Let’s assume some cars are not in use, and that we don’t want to dismember every other person just for the sake of a statistic, that makes two people to a car.

Not every family has one, but some have more than one, and there is a convenience and comfort level that people become used to when they buy one. They do not see the money they spend every day on petrol, on tyre wear, on MOTs, etc. Instead, they see a long-term investment. They have bought a car, and they want to use it. No buses for them to taste the fun of the Sandcastle and Pleasure Beach. They’ll drive, even if it ends up costing more.

Ben is battling to get the message out there in and around Warrington, and there will be other bus companies doing the same where you are. Even if their fleets are not electric, the impact in terms of both carbon and congestion of taking the bus as opposed to the car are significant. If you have an electric car, kudos to you, but 50 of those still cause more traffic than one bus no matter which way you cut it.

I am as guilty as anyone of taking the car on my daily commute. I point to issues of convenience – a 10-minute walk, 10-minute wait at the station (no-one ever arrives right as the train does), one hour train ride, 10-minute walk and 30-minute bus ride vs a 75-minute door-to-door car journey – as key, but I also feel guilty. Costs work out about the same for the fuel/parking and the train/bus tickets, so I can’t go down that route as an argument. I too, have just become wedded to the car and the ‘need’ to use it.

I know I need to take the bus/train more often. Maybe if all 2,280 of us turn up to get on board one morning, services will become more regular, roads that bit quieter, and the air cleaner – except on the bottom deck as 1,140 of us try to cram onto the back seat.

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