September 25 2026

Rebecka Steven analyses the pros and cons of the Government’s summer bus travel promotion for young people.

It was billed as ‘Great British summer savings on bus fares’. The Government’s free bus travel for children policy was heavily promoted during August as a helping hand for families. But how well did it really work on the ground?

The scheme ran for a month across England and although it was voluntary, nearly every bus operator participated.

Over 14.5 million free child bus journeys were made in August. There are about 7.5 million children aged between 5 and 15 in England, so that means that, in broad terms, there were two free bus journeys for each eligible child.

Our research suggests that amount of travel generated by the scheme varied widely around the country. CPT operators report outcomes ranging from a 20-30% growth in child tickets to a two-fold, or even three-fold, increase in travel.

These variations correlate, in part, to whether or not there were pre-existing fare promotions. For example, the uptick was modest in the north-east, where local authorities work with the Mayor to offer a £1 ticket for under 21s, and similarly modest in Leicester, which already tends to offer family and child-friendly fare schemes during school holidays. In contrast, areas such as Portsmouth, Warrington and East Anglia saw a big uplift.

Aside from the numbers, there were some concerns around anti-social behaviour. Police forces in England and Wales record over a million incidents of anti-social behaviour every year, and buses are, of course, not immune. In some parts of the country, the availability of free travel for young people made buses something of a target.

Incidents ranged from the relatively trivial – repeated bell ringing, swearing and playing music – to more serious, including graffiti, vaping and intimidation, largely among teenagers.

In a survey of 1,500 staff at one national bus operator, 79% reported more anti-social behaviour in August and 75% considered the scheme a bad thing. Another operator reported a 32% increase in vandalism. This chimes with the experience north of the border, where free travel for under 22s since 2022 has coincided with more reports of disruptive behaviour.

For bus operators, it is imperative that drivers can go to work free from fear of harm, and that all our passengers can travel safely and comfortably. That’s why tackling anti-social behaviour is a priority for the industry. Operators have rolled out CCTV on nearly every bus in the country and many are forging safer travel partnerships with police, or local authorities. Later this year, the industry will publish its first charter on tackling anti-social behaviour and violence against women and girls.

If future promotions for young people are to be proposed, one approach could be to make a parallel investment in educational materials in schools on anti-social behaviour, and in the deployment of more travel safety officers in areas known to be hotspots

So what are the other learnings? What could be done better next time?

In principle, the bus industry welcomes initiatives that get more people onto public transport – particularly schemes that encourage young people to get into a (hopefully lifelong) habit of catching the bus.

That need not necessarily mean making travel completely free. By reducing the price and creating a low or very low fare for young people, you can generate a large amount of extra travel while still attaching a value to each journey – as Transport North East and Leicester have demonstrated.

A low, rather than a free, fare is also likely to mitigate against some of the anti-social behaviour – by avoiding the sense that buses are a total free-for-all walk on, walk off services for youngsters to stay on for as long as they like.

When it comes to the financial side of free bus travel promotions, bus operators are keen to ensure that reimbursement is fair, and that abstraction is limited. That means ensuring, for example, that lost revenue from group ticket or from adult tickets is taken into account in calculating funding.

Overall, however, the summer travel promotion proved that price is a powerful lever in promoting bus use to young people – and, to coin a phrase, if you offer it, they will come.

No scheme is perfect and there will always be challenges. But if the summer fares scheme persuaded just a proportion of the 14.5 million free travellers to stick with buses for the long term, it will be a net positive payback on investment.

Rebecka Steven is Senior Policy Adviser at the Confederation of Passenger Transport