KCC spends £475,911 on subsidised buses in Thanet

I was curious how much money is spent subsidising bus routes so I asked KCC. This is what I learned.

Stagecoach enjoys £356,927.78 of KCC money for two routes with the remaining money going to Regent Coaches.

The 3 bus routes in Thanet subsidised by KCC are:

• 48/48a – Ramsgate to Birchington
• 36 – Herne Bay to Margate
• 35/37 – Westgate-on-Sea to Margate

I honestly expected to find a lot more routes being subsidised. I was not surprised, however, to learn that Stage Coach picked up a little over £2m in total (£2,008,920.94) in total subsidies in Kent. All that is peanuts to the total cost of subsidised buses in Kent as a whole which has a net cost of just shy of £7m (£6,862,775.09).

Public transport is, it seems, big business.

You can see the figures (in a spreadsheet) as part of the public copy of my freedom of information request.

Image credit: By GarryHenderson6 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,