Making great bus journeys

21 November 2024

A great bus journey – what do passengers want and why it is important?

Passengers want their bus to turn up on time, without a long wait, and to reach their destination in good time mirroring the expectation set in the timetable. Having a good experience at the bus stop/station environment while waiting, with accurate, ideally real-time information, to hand can make this a better experience.

Building on that experience to get from a good to a great journey are two further ingredients; having a friendly and helpful bus driver at the wheel and the experience on the bus (clean and comfortable vehicle).

Both play a larger role, although still secondary to timeliness. This report teases out the factors and what can be done practically to nudge ratings into the satisfied category of journey experience and what factors deliver the very satisfied journey experience. This report also looks behind the data, explaining why the key factors matter to passengers and, where possible, put a spotlight on an area/operator where good work is being done to deliver strong ratings.