Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if she will publish the average cost per passenger journey to the public purse of the £2 bus fare cap in each local transport authority.

The £2 National Bus Fare Cap is a voluntary scheme for eligible bus operators, who are provided a bespoke funding allocation to reimburse the difference between the cap and the shadow commercial fare. This is calculated using the Department for Transport’s methodology which uses each operator’s historic and present data to predict ticket sales for each period of the scheme.

It is not possible to calculate the average cost per passenger journey in each Local Transport Authority (LTA) because the reimbursement is provided directly to bus operators, who do not operate exclusively within LTA boundaries. The total government investment to cap bus fares at £2 between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2024 is around £600 million.