Scotland’s £55 Million Bus Fund Buys the Road Space

The Scottish Government has raised its Bus Infrastructure Fund to £55 million for 2026-27, more than double last year’s capital pot. The money goes to local councils for reliability, access and quicker trips.

Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport Stephen Flynn confirmed the allocation on 26 August 2026, before a Better Buses roundtable with operators, councils and passenger groups.

What the Bus Infrastructure Fund Will Pay For

The Bus Infrastructure Fund is a capital grant. Transport Scotland will put £55 million of capital funding in 2026-27 into projects that make buses easier to use, faster and more regular, up from £20 million in 2025-26. Flynn said the public expect buses to run on time, and that the cash is there so councils can build the priority measures and passenger facilities they say they need.

It replaces the Bus Partnership Fund and the Community Bus Fund. The cheque goes to local authorities and regional transport partnerships that work with operators, not to operators as a fleet grant. That is the whole point of the rise. Holyrood is buying tarmac, lights and stops, because a bus that sits in a queue is a bus people stop trusting.

WHAT THE FUND WILL BUY

• Road space: Dedicated bus lanes, gates and priority signals, plus junction changes that help buses without adding general traffic capacity.
• Stops and hubs: Shelters, accessible kerbs, real-time screens, stations, terminals and places where buses meet trains, ferries or trams.
• Design staff: Capitalised costs for business cases, design and construction of those schemes.
• Not on the list: Buses themselves, diesel or electric, plus depots, chargers, operator offices and printed timetables.

Paul White, director for the Confederation of Passenger Transport Scotland, backed the 2026-27 round and said faster, more dependable running is how you get people to choose the bus. “Bus priority and other targeted infrastructure improvements can reduce delays, improve journey times and give passengers greater confidence that their bus will get them where they need to be, when they need to be there,” he said.

Flynn Put the Cash in Front of New Bus Law

The timing was not a coincidence. Flynn used the announcement to open a Better Buses legislation roundtable, a first-100-days promise of the government that took office after the 2026 election. He was appointed on 20 May 2026. The 26 August release sat inside that window.

The public rightly want and expect their buses to run on time which is why the Scottish Government is investing £55 million in the infrastructure to help make that happen.

Stephen Flynn, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport, Transport Scotland

He said cheaper journeys and stronger services in every community are the aim, and that passengers, operators and transport authorities were in the room to shape how new law helps. On 9 September 2026 he told Holyrood’s Transport Committee the better buses law need not be one bill. It could be several shorter bills if that gets specific changes through faster. He also said the government had put £4 million on the table for franchising, after a budget deal, so councils can look at taking control of routes, fares and timetables.

Transport Scotland posted the pledge the morning of the roundtable.

Ahead of the Better Buses roundtable, @StephenFlynnSNP confirms £55 million to improve bus services across Scotland.

The @scotgov investment will support projects that make buses:

🔹 faster
🔹 more reliable
🔹 easier to use

Read more ➡️ https://t.co/WcmgSBX9aV pic.twitter.com/ki0jw7RNg0

— Transport Scotland (@transcotland) August 26, 2026

The 2019 transport act already lets councils franchise, form bus partnerships or run services themselves. Flynn’s argument is that the statute is slow and clumsy, and that the new work is about making those tools usable. The £55 million is the physical half of that bet. A franchise that still crawls along a clogged corridor is a timetable with a new logo.

Last Year’s £20 Million Favoured Rural Councils

The 2025-26 fund was £20 million, split as £10 million of Tier 1 paid through the General Capital Grant and £10 million of Tier 2 for voluntary bus partnerships that had been left hanging when the old partnership fund paused. Tier 1 used a transport-poverty formula agreed with COSLA, with a £50,000 floor, so rural and poorer areas took a larger share and the big cities sat on the floor.

2025-26 TIER 1, SELECTED COUNCILS

That split is defensible if the job is a shelter in a village with no other option. It is a poor match for the job Flynn now describes, which is getting buses through city traffic. Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen cannot buy a corridor for £50,000. Tier 2 is where the arterial schemes live, and that is where the extra 2026-27 capital has to land if the reliability pledge is going to show up on a clock.

The older Bus Partnership Fund spent £20.5 million on priority kit, including bus gates, cameras and traffic-light gear in North Ayrshire, Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and a gate at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. Plenty of the 2025-26 BIF work was still in design when operators asked, in early 2026, how long passengers would wait to feel it. The new total is a bet that those drawings can be built.

334 Million Bus Journeys Still Trail the Peak

Scottish Transport Statistics 2025, released on 25 March 2026, put bus use at 334 million journeys in 2024-25, up 2% on the year before. That is still 7% below 2019-20 and 31% below the 2007-08 peak. Bus accounted for 73% of public transport trips, so when the bus fails, public transport fails.

SCOTLAND’S BUS NUMBERS 2024-25

• Free and cheap travel: 55% of journeys ran on the National Concessionary Travel Scheme, and 2.4 million people held cards in 2025.
• Public money already in fares: Operators received £392 million for concessionary support and £124 million more from local or central government, against £391 million in passenger revenue.
• A thinner industry: Fleets were 15% smaller than in 2019-20, and staffing was down 10%.
• More miles, fewer extra riders: Vehicle kilometres rose 5% in 2024 while passenger numbers rose 2%.

Motor vehicles registered in Scotland hit a record 3.2 million. Motor traffic ran to 49.3 billion vehicle kilometres in 2024, a shade above 48.7 billion in 2019. The government’s own test for this fund is a shift off the private car. On that test the country is still driving, and a large share of the people already on the bus are not paying a full fare. The remaining complaint, the one Flynn quoted, is the wait and the crawl.

Glasgow Is Wiring Traffic Lights for Buses

Glasgow is the early proof of what the 2026-27 round is for. The city council’s Glasgow City Region Bus Partnership page says BIF money from 2025 and 2026 is paying for priority corridors and for an AI traffic-signal trial. Initial tests in May 2026 on Pollokshaws Road produced a 33 percent cut in journey times for all vehicles when the new signal plans ran. The next step is to point that system at buses, then copy it onto Paisley Road West and Aikenhead Road.

GLASGOW’S FIVE BUS CORRIDORS

• Paisley Road West: A full-corridor plan from Paisley into Hope Street, with active travel built in.
• Pollokshaws Road: Extended lanes, a segregated busway by Pollok Park, and the AI signal pilot.
• Dumbarton Road: A west-end artery being assessed for new priority.
• Great Western Road: The same corridor study, aimed at delays and reliability.
• Maryhill Road: The fifth of the city’s busiest routes in the 2026-27 package.

City administration members accepted a further Tier 2 award in September 2026 so that work can move. Last year’s Tier 1 figure for Glasgow City was £88,000. Corridor design, signal upgrades and stop rebuilds cost in the millions, which is why the national pot had to move. If the Pollokshaws result holds once the system is tuned for buses, it is the cheapest argument in the country for spending on lights rather than on speeches about public control.

A Council Takeover in Thurso and Wick

The other half of the model is already happening in Caithness, without waiting for a Better Buses act. Highland Council said Stagecoach’s Thurso and Wick operation will pass to council-owned D&E Coaches on 19 October 2026. Twenty drivers and six maintenance staff, 26 people in all, transfer under TUPE, with no planned redundancies. The deal takes the fleet, the depot and the school, public and Dounreay work.

Council leader Raymond Bremner said the purchase secures jobs and rural routes and strengthens an in-house network the council has been growing since it bought D&E. Stagecoach North Scotland managing director David Beaton said the move keeps every local colleague in work. That is municipal control in practice: a council running the buses because the commercial network was ready to let go.

Highland already took the largest 2025-26 Tier 1 slice, £1,155,000, under the poverty formula. Owning the depot does not, by itself, get a Wick service through a jammed junction in Inverness. The infrastructure fund is the money for that junction. The new law is the money and the power for the next council that wants to follow Bremner without a distressed sale.

A £2 Cap Cannot Clear a Junction

Flynn’s wider bus package is already heavier on fares than on tarmac. He told parliament that about 76% of operators had joined the £2 single cap in Strathclyde, and that reimbursements in the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport area are estimated at £53 million to £61 million for 2026-27. A Highlands and Islands scheme has had about £10 million. Those sums sit beside concessionary support of £392 million in 2024-25. The £55 million capital pot is smaller than the west of Scotland fare cap alone.

That mix is why the August roundtable was not a celebration of a big number. Cheap tickets fill seats on a bus that turns up. They do not punch a hole in a queue of 3.2 million registered vehicles. The angry reading of the pledge, the one that met Transport Scotland’s own post, is that bus lanes are another raid on car space after cycle tracks and 20mph limits. The quieter reading is the same fact without the grievance: priority only works if something else gives way.

On 19 October the Caithness routes move in-house. Through 2026-27, councils will draw down the enlarged fund on lights, gates and stops. The Better Buses bills, one or several, still have to be written. Until those three pieces sit on the same corridor, Scotland is paying to make a slow bus cheaper.