Overview

We are carrying out a survey to understand how the council's supported bus network in Fife is performing and whether it is meeting your needs.

The Council has limited resources available and is looking at how to best use these to support and improve Fife’s bus network.  Most bus users are unlikely to notice a difference between a commercial and a supported bus service or journey. In many cases they are run by the same bus operators, using the same buses and drivers. The only difference is how these buses are funded.

Commercial bus services are run by bus operators for a profit. This means that if a route has low passenger numbers and is not profitable, the bus company may stop running that service. When this happens, Fife Council often step in and pay for a bus company to continue to run that service. These are called Supported (or tendered) Services. Bus fares are not enough to cover the costs of running these services which means that without financial support from Fife Council they probably wouldn’t run. The Council funds these Supported Services so that the bus network serves as many people in Fife as possible.