Debate about the future of bus services in the UK tends to focus on technology: zero-emission fleets, automation, smarter ticketing... Less focus is on the underlying structure of the bus networks themselves. Who coordinates them? How are decisions made about services and procurement? Over the last few months, Balazs Csuvar and Ash Dowler of DG Cities have been working on a UK Government-funded project exploring the feasibility of deploying automated shuttle services in Glasgow.
What began as a technical and operational exercise became a useful, practical examination of how deregulated bus networks function in practice. And the implications for innovation, as Director of Innovation & Net Zero, Balazs Csuvar explains.
Imagine a bus network where routes and timetables are coordinated, fares are standardised, data is collected centrally and analysed to decide where adjustments need to be made to the system. Imagine that this work is done by a central public body, one that ensures a high standard of bus operational efficiency and passenger satisfaction is achieved.
If you live in London, this might seem familiar. The above system pretty well describes the network with Transport for London at the helm - necessary, given the capital’s scale and multi-modal transport. This is, however, not the case in almost all other areas in the UK.
Over the last nine months, DG Cities has been delivering a UK Government-funded project looking at the potential feasibility of an automated shuttle service in Glasgow. When reviewing how an automated service might fit into the existing public transport system, we wanted to find out how the current network operates. We were interested in understanding where provision doesn’t meet demand, for example, or where large buses might be running below capacity at different times of day. We wanted to build the business case, without infringing on parts of the bus routes that are operating successfully.
However, we found that it was pretty much impossible to do this.
Bringing a new service to a deregulated network
Glasgow, like most other UK cities apart from London (and more recently Greater Manchester), has had a deregulated bus network since 1986. This means that private bus operators decide timetables, routes and fares for their bus services. In theory, one can turn up, drive across the city in a bus and collect a fare from passengers.
From a commercial perspective, however, there is very little to no information available on which bus routes are busy, underserved or overserved that could help a new entrant figure out where to direct a new service. Operators do not have to share this data with the regulatory body that oversees public transport in the city region, which means they cannot effectively intervene or orchestrate the bus network. As a Londoner, this feels quite far from what we are used to, where TfL is constantly tweaking the system to make it run more efficiently, using all its travel data across all travel modes to have the best chance for the most effective data-driven decisions.
There is appetite for change. Glasgow is looking to move to a franchising model and in their consultation, they found both the public and relevant organisations to be overwhelmingly in support of changing the current system. This will play out over the coming years, in a similar way to other initiatives in places like Liverpool, across Yorkshire or the West Midlands, to name a few.
For us, the scenario was interesting, as we essentially tested the supposed benefit of a deregulated system - the ability for a new provider to start a service of their choice, providing alternatives for travellers, innovate and reduce costs.
However, the benefits of this in practice were limited. The overwhelming market penetration of the incumbent operators and their total ownership of all travel data make it challenging to understand where to focus attention. There is no option to make the network more efficient, reconsider a few routes or timetables - one can only put a new proposal together that financially has to stand on its own. This means likely a focus on central areas to have the best chance of finding sufficient users.
Mapping the road ahead
As a new technology, automated vehicles (and the smaller, more flexible shuttle formats they enable) are often presented as a way to work around the constraints of existing public transport systems. In practice, they do the opposite: they expose those constraints more clearly.
“...effective public transport requires coordination and an authority with the mandate to balance commercial viability with public value. These changes take time. There is no single model that can simply be lifted from London and applied elsewhere. But the current direction of travel matters.”
Cities like Glasgow are not failing to innovate. They are operating within governance and market structures that were never designed for today’s network-level optimisation, data-led decision-making or dynamic integration across modes. Expecting new services to deliver systemic benefits in this context places an unreasonable burden on individual projects, technologies and operators to solve problems that are fundamentally structural.
Whether we’re assessing automated shuttles or other emerging mobility solutions, this transition creates a new opportunity. Their flexibility makes them well suited to filling gaps, responding to time-of-day demand and supporting areas that struggle to sustain high-capacity services. To unlock that potential, cities need to map how their networks currently function and, from this, enhance the ability to shape them deliberately.
With the right data, governance, and partnerships in place, innovation does not have to compete with existing services or concentrate only where demand is already strongest. Instead, it can become part of a more coherent, responsive system that reflects local needs and evolves over time. In that sense, projects like this are not just about testing new technologies, but about helping cities build the conditions in which innovation can genuinely add value.
