Fares on Britain’s most scenic bus route to rise from £4 to £25 under Reeves cuts

Removal of travel subsidy threatens to kill off tourism boom

Fares on Britain’s most scenic bus route are at risk of rising by £20 as a result of planned funding cuts in Rachel Reeves’s Budget.
A one-way ticket on the Coastliner 840 from Leeds to Whitby via the North York Moors has been pegged at £2 since January last year, spurring a surge in passenger numbers.
However, with the England-wide cap expected to become a casualty of the Chancellor’s spending clampdown later this month, prices on the route could hit £25 for a return ticket, based on the original price and allowing for inflation, up from £4 today.
Such a significant increase could kill off a boom in tourists drawn to the 840 by its moorland views, undermining the viability of a route that was earmarked for closure before the fare cap was introduced in 2023.
Matt Burley, the marketing manager at Coastliner parent Transdev, said the removal of the cap, which requires £350m of government funding a year, would inevitably lead to costs being passed on to customers.
Labour expenses have risen about 10pc over the past few years, he said, while fuel costs are up 25pc. Prices for engineering parts have also gained 30pc, making the 840 Transdev’s most expensive route to run.
Prior to its potential closure in January last year, the 840 was voted the most scenic route in the UK by an online poll organised by Bus Users UK in 2018.
The introduction of the £2 fare cap salvaged the route, which benefited from a resurgence in demand for bus-based breaks and day trips.
Mr Burley said: “It just took off. The profile of the 840 was already high, but now it was also much more affordable. We had people write to us saying they’d just taken the bus and that they were complete converts.”
The route takes in York and the market towns of Malton and Pickering before climbing on to the North York Moors, where it runs via Goathland, which doubled for the fictional village of Aidensfield in 1960s-set police drama Heartbeat and remains a huge draw for tourists.
From there it descends to the coast at Whitby, with its bustling harbour, award-winning fish-and-chip shops and a ruined abbey that inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula.
Other picturesque routes that have experienced a surge in popularity since the fare cap was introduced face a similarly worrying future should it be allowed to expire in December.
While industry and Whitehall sources suggest that Ms Reeves will initially lift the cap to £2.50 and then £3, the expectation is that it will be gone altogether by the start of 2026.
Rural services will be hit far harder than urban ones, the Confederation of Passenger Transport trade group predicts, since the level of subsidy required is far higher.
Stagecoach’s 555 service, which takes more than three hours to travel the 50 miles between the city of Lancaster and Keswick in north-west Cumbria via the heart of the Lake District, is of such renown that it has its own Wikipedia entry.
Ridership on the 555, operated by open-top double-deckers, has increased 10pc this year, even though tourist numbers in the national park have declined 10pc. Such growth is unlikely to be maintained if the cap is removed and previous fares of £11 each way are reintroduced.
Tom Waterhouse, Stagecoach’s managing director for Cumbria and north Lancashire, said the £2 cap inspired a completely new group of people to travel by bus, leaving the 555 no longer dependent on locals alone for its viability.
He said: “There’s no doubt that removing the cap would have an impact on fares and a very real impact on the number of people using the 555 and bus travel in general.
“We have to be very careful about how we transition away from a fare-capping regime. If there’s a hard stop without any support we’re in danger of damaging the UK bus network.”
The popularity of the 555, which passes four lakes and tarns and climbs to almost 800 feet on the flanks of Helvellyn, has also helped to remove thousands of cars from the Lake District’s narrow lanes.
In south-west England, the Exmoor Coaster, operated by the Adventures by Bus brand of FirstGroup, cost £12 for a ticket when it was introduced in 2021.
The journey, which takes two hours and 25 minutes, carries passengers from Minehead in Somerset to Ilfracombe in Devon via the villages of Dunster, Porlock and Lynmouth, and offers elevated views across the moor to the Bristol Channel and Wales.
A FirstGroup spokesman said all of its Adventures by Bus routes, which include the Lands End and Atlantic Coasters in Cornwall and the Portland and Jurassic Coasters in Dorset, had experienced a significant jump in passenger numbers since the advent of the £2 fare.
The Department for Transport referred to comments earlier this month from Simon Lightwood, the local transport minister, who said the Government was considering the benefits of the £2 cap and what steps to take next as part of Ms Reeves’s spending review.