Bus boardings in North Somerset reached 704,453 in July, the best month since April 2023 and more than 32% up on July 2023. The longer DfT trend is less rosy.

Buses to and from North Somerset carried 704,453 passenger boardings in July, the highest monthly total the council has recorded since April 2023.

North Somerset Council published the figure on 2 September. It puts July more than 170,000 boardings above July 2023, an increase of more than 32 per cent, and calls it the strongest month since before the pandemic. (North Somerset Council, 2 September)

Two things are worth knowing before the number is read as a headcount.

  • A boarding is counted every time somebody steps on a bus. A return trip is two boardings, and a journey with a change is more. It is not a count of people.
  • The figure covers services “travelling to and from North Somerset”, not only journeys that start and end inside the district. Commuter routes into Bristol are in it.

The longer run, from a different source

The council’s number is a monthly total it holds itself. For the direction of travel over more than one year, the comparable public series is the Department for Transport’s, which counts local bus passenger journeys inside each council area for the year to March.

On that measure North Somerset recorded 5.0 million journeys in the year to March 2025, up from 4.6 million the year before. The pandemic low was 1.6 million in the year to March 2021. The high point of the last fifteen years was 7.7 million in the year to March 2017, and the district is still well short of it. (DfT table BUS01e)

Bus journeys in North Somerset, and how far back they fell Local bus passenger journeys, millions, year ending March. The 2017 peak has not been matched. 0 3m 6m 9m 7.7m 1.6m 5.0m 2010 2013 2016 2019 2022 2025 Source: Department for Transport, table BUS01e, published 26 November 2025. Graphic by The North Somerset Post.
Local bus journeys in North Somerset, year ending March. Graphic by The North Somerset Post.

The two sets of figures are not measuring the same thing, and the DfT series stops eighteen months earlier. Read together, they say the recovery is real and is not finished.

What the council puts it down to

The council lists free travel schemes, service changes and stop improvements rather than any single cause.

  • Supported services. The council funds the U2 and X14, which it says continue to connect communities across the district and with neighbouring areas.
  • Free travel for care leavers. Across the West of England, care leavers aged 18 to 25 travel free until their 26th birthday.
  • Kids Go Free. The regional scheme gave children and young people free bus travel through the school summer holidays, which in England begin in the last full week of July.
  • Waiting and information. New and improved interchanges and stops, better seating and accessibility, clearer wayfinding, and real-time screens showing when a service is due.
  • Bus priority. Bus lanes, priority measures and upgraded traffic signals at junctions, to cut delays.

Councillor Hugh Malyan, the council’s Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport, said in the announcement: “It’s encouraging to see more people choosing to travel by bus. Reliable services are vital to helping people get around and supporting our local economy.”

The council also quoted a regular passenger, Joe, aged 16: “I’m yet to experience a bus arriving or departing more than a minute outside its scheduled time.”

What it means for you

If you looked at the buses here a few years ago and wrote them off, the network is not what it was in 2022. The most recent change to it is local: the X10 was extended to upper Clevedon on Sunday 30 August. (North Somerset Council, 26 August)

Live times, routes and disruption for every service are on the WEST Journey Planner, which is the council’s own recommendation.

One caution for the next few weeks. The M5 at junction 21 drops to three narrow lanes from 19 September, and the Weston station crossing works start on 14 September, both of which will slow buses through Weston and Worle. We keep the detail current on our North Somerset roadworks and travel page, and the rail alternative is on our train times to London page.

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