The Brabant bus transport is on the rise. Whether it concerns reducing the staff shortage, improving reliability, or recovering passenger numbers.
In almost all important areas, 2024 shows a significant increase, according to this weeks presented trend report on public transport.
Reducing Staff Shortages
The main factor is perhaps the reduction of staff shortages among bus operators. In 2024, Hermes and Arriva managed to attract enough new staff to scale up the timetable again. In South-East already in October 2024 with 30,000 hours. In West and East Brabant, a similar scaling up would follow in early 2025.
Reliability
This has also significantly improved the reliability of bus transport. Among other things, due to a number of strike days, the trip cancellation rate in 2023 was very high at 5 percent. In 2024, that percentage has been reduced to 1.5 percent, partly due to the recruitment of additional drivers. Punctuality has also improved.
This leads to more and more passengers rediscovering the bus, especially the recreational traveler on weekends. It is now at 95 percent of the number of passengers before corona. The number of students and commuters remains behind on weekdays. The total number of trips made in 2024 was at 85 percent of the level before corona.
Last year, Brabants buses transported more than 46.5 million passengers in total. These passengers rated their journey with an average score of 7.8. In East Brabant, that was even a 7.9.
