Overview of Commercial Bus Services in 2024
This statistical bulletin focuses on public bus transport provided by licensed public bus passenger services operating to a regular schedule in Ireland during 2024.
Licensed public bus passenger services are often called “commercial” bus services because they are operated without any public subsidy from the Authority.
Minimal Growth in Passenger Journeys
The year 2024 saw a stagnation in growth of passenger journeys on regular public bus passenger services.
The overall passenger journeys increased by just over 200 thousand when compared to 2023, which represents a 1% increase, going to 22.6 million passenger journeys.
This represented the lowest increase since data was first collected in 2013 (excluding the large decrease of 21% in 2020 due to Covid).
The highest increase was between 2021 and 2022 with an 83% increase in passenger journeys. Total passenger journeys in 2024 had grown by 13.2 million from the 9.4 million low of 2020.
22.6 Mllion passenger journeys below Pre-Pandemic peak
With the similar passenger levels when compared to the previous Bulletins, overall passenger journeys were still approximately 22.6 million passenger journeys or 26% below the peak of 30.5 million in 2019.
Passenger journeys on commercial bus services in 2024 represented 6% of all public transport journeys, down from 9.4% in 2019. The number of active regular licences continued to fall and was at 76% of the 2019 peak. The greatest decrease was of those licences operating wholly outside of the GDA. There was also a drop in the number of operators. Overall, the total number of operators went down to 70% compared to the 2019 peak. Most of this decrease occurred among operators holding a single licence.
2019: The Peak Year for Commercial Bus Services
2019 was the peak of both passenger journeys and scheduled kilometres for commercial bus services. In that year there were 30.5 million passenger journeys made, and 101.2 million kilometres scheduled. Passenger journeys dropped by 69% from 2019 to 2020.
This 69% decline for commercial bus services was the largest decline in passenger journeys of all public transport services .
Services operating outside of the GDA have seen a slower growth since 2020
The next steepest decline was on Heavy Rail services which dropped by 64%. Passenger journeys on the commercial bus services outside of the Greater Dublin Area (“GDA”) fell by less than the journeys on services stopping in the GDA. However, these services operating outside of the GDA have seen a slower growth since 2020.
COVID-19’s Lasting Impact on Travel Patterns
From the outset COVID-19 brought about changes to travel demand, which continued to impact travel and travel patterns in 2024. This is especially evident in the different levels of change between kilometres operated and passenger journeys from 2020 to 2024.
Comparative Recovery Across Transport Modes
Passenger journeys on the commercial bus services have increased more since 2020 than on contracted public bus services.
Overall commercial bus passenger journeys have increased by 140% with contracted bus service passenger journeys increasing by 138%.
Both Heavy and Light Rail services passenger journeys increased at a greater rate than the bus services. However, as the commercial bus passenger journeys had decreased to a greater extent than the other modes of public transport during the pandemic, in 2024 they were at 74% of the 2019 peak.
The contracted bus services passenger journeys were over 22% higher in 2024 than in 2019, with Luas Light Rail services 12% above the 2019.
Previous bulletin
