UK local bus journeys and revenue components, follow-up to #254/#257: DfT BUS01 passenger and concessionary journeys by area, BUS05i revenue components, NTS0303/NTS0601 trip rates #274

Summary

PR #255 closed #254 with the DfT BUS05i passenger fare receipts and net support (BUS05ai, BUS05bi) and the NTS0705a local-bus trip rates by household income quintile, and PR #258 closed #257 with the NTS0313/NTS0621 frequency-of-use tables. Microcosm's PolicyEngine/microcosm#890 (PolicyEngine/microcosm#904, PolicyEngine/microcosm#927) binds those receipts as calibration targets and, at the spine's lcfs stage, rakes the imputed fares to the same receipts, so the bound targets are level-set by the stage. PolicyEngine/microcosm#930 is the structural fix María ruled on 2026-09-15: impute local-bus journeys per person from the National Travel Survey microdata (UKDS SN 5340) and price them at the published revenue per journey by area, so the stage sets a quantity and a published price and the fare rake retires. The price is receipts over fare-paying boardings, and the feed carries the receipts but not the journeys: the pinned artifact (ec200856) has no DfT passenger-journeys concept, no concessionary-journeys concept and no BUS05 revenue component beyond fare receipts and net support. Scotland (scotgov.bus.passenger_journeys, all and concessionary), Northern Ireland (dfi_ni.translink_bus.passenger_journeys) and Wales (welshgov.bus.passenger_journeys) journeys are already there. This asks for the England side and the checks the consumer needs; the trips-to-boardings translation, the eligibility rule and the pricing stay in Microcosm.

Chronicle owns preserved publisher artifacts, source cells and emitted facts; the translation and the calibration bindings stay in Microcosm.

1. DfT BUS01: local bus passenger journeys by area (the journeys denominator)

• What landed: nothing on journeys for England. The BUS05i workbook (dft-bus05i-revenue-support-2025) gives receipts and net support for England, London, England outside London and the metropolitan / non-metropolitan areas, years ending March 2023 to 2025.
• Requested: the DfT Annual Bus Statistics workbook BUS01 "Local bus passenger journeys" (year ending March 2025 edition, published 26 November 2025, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus01-local-bus-passenger-journeys): passenger journeys on local bus services by country, region, metropolitan area status and urban-rural classification, for the same five areas the BUS05i package emits (England, London, England outside London, English metropolitan areas, English non-metropolitan areas) and the nine English regions, every fiscal year the sheet carries (at least years ending March 2023 to 2025); unit journeys (boardings). The per-head sheet is welcome as a check. The local-authority sheet is welcome if cheap (it serves the local grain later), not needed for this consumer.
• Closes: fare-paying boardings per area once item 2 lands, and a published boardings total the consumer's frame-implied boardings can be checked against.

2. DfT BUS01: concessionary passenger journeys by area

• What landed: nothing for England. Scotland's concessionary_passenger_journeys (Scottish Transport Statistics table 2.2) is in the feed.
• Requested: the concessionary journeys sheet of the same BUS01 workbook (older and disabled concessionary passholders' journeys, the former BUS0105 / BUS0113 series) by the same areas and years as item 1.
• Closes: fare-paying boardings = total journeys minus concessionary journeys, which is the denominator of the revenue per fare-paying journey; and the publisher's concessionary boarding share, which the consumer records beside its statutory-eligibility share.

3. DfT BUS05i: operating revenue and support by component

• What landed: BUS05ai passenger fare receipts and BUS05bi total estimated net support, current prices, years ending March 2023 to 2025.
• Requested: the remaining component sheets of the same preserved BUS05i workbook ("Government support and concessionary travel in current prices"): concessionary travel reimbursement, Bus Service Operators Grant, local authority support for tendered / supported services, and gross operating revenue, by the same areas and years. The constant-price twin (BUS05ii) is not needed.
• Closes: reimbursement per concessionary journey and grant plus tendered support per boarding, so the consumer can record what a value-side treatment of bus_subsidy_spending would give (today it is raked to BUS05bi and bound to it, the same shape as the fares).

4. NTS0303 and NTS0601: trips per person by main mode, all ages and by age band

• What landed: NTS0705a trips per person per year for "bus in London" and "other local bus" by household income quintile and for all households (CY2023, CY2024); NTS0313 / NTS0621 frequency-of-use shares (all ages, 60 and over).
• Requested: NTS0303 average number of trips per person per year by main mode (England, all ages) and NTS0601 trips per person per year by age band and main mode (England), the latest three survey years published (2023, 2024 and 2025 if the 2025 tables are out), for the local-bus rows at least (bus in London, other local bus) and the all-modes total.
• Closes: the consumer's fact checks on the imputed trip rates by age (the eligibility rule is an age rule) and on the level of local-bus trips per resident, which the pricing uses as the trips side of the boardings-per-trip translation.

5. Devolved concessionary journeys where published

• What landed: Scotland all and concessionary journeys (FY2023, FY2024); Northern Ireland Translink journeys and receipts by service (FY2019 to FY2024); Wales journeys (FY2022 to FY2024).
• Requested: Northern Ireland concessionary (SmartPass) journeys if DfI or Translink publish them as a statistical table; Welsh Government concessionary fare journeys (StatsWales) as optional. Only publisher tables; company report figures only if Chronicle's artifact policy admits them, as for the NITHC accounts.
• Closes: the same fare-paying split for the Northern Ireland price (Scotland's is already derivable). Wales is not priced in the consumer (no fare receipts are published), so its concessionary journeys are a check only.

Not asked

• Welsh fare receipts: not published (recorded as publisher-limited in Bind DfT, HMRC, DESNZ, Ofgem and ORR facts for bus fares, road fuel, domestic energy and rail support (#790 ruling: bind facts and calibrate) microcosm#890 and UK bus fares: impute journeys from NTS microdata so the DfT receipts targets are not level-set by the stage (#890 follow-up) microcosm#930).
• The NTS microdata itself (UKDS End User Licence, consumer-side pinned donor) and its England-only coverage since 2013.
• BUS0415 fares index, NTS0705a, NTS0313 / NTS0621, VEH1103: already vendored.
• ONS mid-year population by region: already in the feed.

Packaging notes

• DfT labels fiscal years by the closing year ("Year ending March 2025" is FY2024-25), as the BUS05i package records in period_coverage; the consumer selects by period_coverage.start_date, so the coverage block matters more than the label.
• The BUS05i workbook is already a preserved artifact; item 3 is additional record sets on it, not a new artifact, if the parser can reach the other sheets. Items 1 and 2 are one new artifact (the BUS01 workbook) with several record sets.
• Geography ids as in the BUS05i package (E92000001, E12000007, dft:england_outside_london, dft:english_metropolitan_areas, dft:english_non_metropolitan_areas), with region rows at E12000001 to E12000009.

Context

• Consumer design: UK bus fares: impute journeys from NTS microdata so the DfT receipts targets are not level-set by the stage (#890 follow-up) microcosm#930 (plan approved 2026-09-17): a person-grain nts_bus_travel stage imputes the NTS frequency-of-use band and assigns trips from the diary's band means; lcfs_consumption prices non-eligible persons' trips at receipts over fare-paying boardings times a declared boardings-per-resident-trip translation (BUS01 over NTS0705a trips per person times ONS population); the Bind DfT, HMRC, DESNZ, Ofgem and ORR facts for bus fares, road fuel, domestic energy and rail support (#790 ruling: bind facts and calibrate) microcosm#890 fare rake and incidence draw retire and the Bind the Chronicle transport and energy facts on the UK national surface (#890 PR-T) microcosm#904 receipts targets stay bound.
• Once packaged, Microcosm re-pins the feed, vendors the rows with tools/vendor_uk_ledger_facts.py (dft_bus_journeys.json, nts_trip_rates.json), and records the frame-implied boardings against the published ones in the receipts.

🤖 Filed with Claude Code