First Glasgow to end night bus services due to low passenger numbers

First Bus has announced it is withdrawing its weekend night-time services across Glasgow.

First Glasgow said it made the decision following a review of passenger numbers over the past year, which revealed that buses were regularly operating with as few as 14 customers per hour.

The late-night network – which was reintroduced last June to support the city’s night-time economy following the COVID pandemic – will stop on 31 July.

The change will affect 11 routes that operate in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings.

The services cover travel from the city centre across Glasgow and the surrounding areas, including Clydebank, Paisley, Newton Mearns, East Kilbride, Hamilton, Motherwell and Wishaw.

The bus operator said it absorbed the operating losses over the past 12 months to give the services “every chance to succeed”.

Despite “significant efforts” to promote the services, including offering free tickets in December last year, passenger numbers remained between 30-35%.

Drivers affected by the change are to be redeployed into the daytime network.

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Graeme Macfarlan, commercial director at First Bus Scotland, said: “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.”