First Glasgow is to scrap night buses at the end of this month with 11 routes set to be affected.
The company today announced (July 10) that they will be withdrawing night bus services, just over a year after they were reintroduced to help boost the night-time economy in the city. However, after a year of monitoring numbers, it found that services are regularly operating with as few as 14 passengers per hour.
The buses covered travel from the city centre across Glasgow and the surrounding areas including Clydebank, Paisley, Newton Mearns, East Kilbride, Hamilton, Motherwell and Wishaw.
The change will impact 11 routes that operate across the city in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings.Drivers who work late into the night to deliver these services will be redeployed into the daytime network to further support existing services across the city where passenger recovery is strong and additional capacity is required.
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Graeme Macfarlan, commercial director at First Bus Scotland, said: “We were delighted to be able to reintroduce our night bus network last June in an attempt to support the city’s night-time economy.
“Despite a wide variety of efforts by First Glasgow and partner organisations to increase the number of people using the night buses, it has not reached the level required to sustain these services beyond July. To do so, we would require the number of people using them each weekend to treble overnight, which is not realistic.
“We really wanted to give these services every chance to succeed which is why we have absorbed the operating losses for the last 12 months. It has become clear, however, given the change in behaviour and times people are going out in the city at the weekend, there is not enough appetite in Glasgow for night bus services to successfully operate into the early hours.”
Despite significant efforts from First Glasgow to promote the services, including offering free tickets in December last year, passenger numbers remained between 30 and and 35 per cent.
First Glasgow also highlighted its concerns on night bus service uptake through meetings with stakeholders and partner organisations as an attempt to secure promotional support.
