From my inbox ... from a Melksham (where I live) friend currently in a small town in Scandinavia.

"The buses/trains are so easy to use and every 15 minutes. I wonder how they manage to keep them running as they are rarely full. Folk bring their bikes on and pay a child’s fare for bike".

Ten things to consider

1. In the UK, 60% to 70% of the income to run the buses and trains comes from the fare-box, but in many other countries they're seen as a public service and only 30% to 40% of the income comes from fares, with most of the rest being from the state.

2. Staff across Scandinavia tend to be multitasking. On a train I used in Sweden, the guard was also issuing tickets (common in the UK too), providing information including about bus services, keeping the train clean, and selling drinks and snacks too.

3. Trains and buses are mostly modern, and where they are old they tend to be fairly basic. So they're saved much of the significant expense of keeping complex old equipment (no longer at the leading edge!) running beyond the end of its planned life.

4. Trains and buses for the UK are expensive / UK market only, right hand drive on the road and smaller loading gauge on the rails, so they are UK special designs or special builds - the specialisation cost having to be recovered over a relatively small build run.   We also tend to over-rule, over-analyse and over-engineer on both infrastructure and vehicles.

5. Much of our UK infrastructure is old - we are an old country and care for our space and heritage, adding significant planning restrictions.  There is much less population density in Scandinavia, and in many other parts of Europe the destruction of WWII allowed for building anew for traffic of that time - not so much slower than today - rather than Victorian speeds and travel needs, and of a railway that was designed for dominant loose coupled freight trains with passenger services being occasional and slow between those freights

6. The UK ticketing system, with its complex fares, gets itself a very bad name for high cost.  But yet on many occasions it's far from expensive for those who know how the system works.   I have spent £36.00 today [written 20.9.2025] for a return train journey from Melksham to London and don't consider that bad value.  And had I brought my bike or a dog, a half fare of that for them would have been reasonable and logical.  Sadly, booking online often promotes / sells higher price tickets to those who don't know the legal tricks and techniques and puts off new customers and makes for bad press.

7. In the UK, The unhealthy mix of barriered stations, open stations with on-train checks, and a complex fare system provide profligate loopholes into which those tempted to defraud the system will jump, and potholes that will trap the unwary leading to a mixture of fares not collected (loss of revenue) for genuine mistakes and because people can get away with it, and leading to a fear in the nervous of risking using the system.

8. The UK culture on buses is to consider them lower class and only use them if you are poor. UK towns are built for cars and car parking, bus stations often relegated away from the centre. A frequent bus service and a pedestrianised centre makes such a difference in Scandinavia.  So does having the bus able to take your bicycle, and having it call at the railway station too!

9. UK bus and train services were "commercialised" in the 1980s / 1990s making for the operation of services for the narrow profit of the companies running them, with the public sector - which was then squeezed - stepping in old to support services which were "socially necessary", decisions on what that meant being made by elected representatives in local government and their civil servants who were not service users as they mostly drove, and who prioritised accountant outputs. So many round trip opportunities at shoulder times were lost, and with that the loss of journeys made on the other "leg" of the potential round trip too, reducing passenger numbers there and leaving a leaner and, ironically, less viable network. 

10. As a tourist, you'll have a different travel pattern to the daily commuters and residents, so you'll tend to be on the quieter services anyway, and that may mislead you into thinking there’s a bigger difference than there really is. I note that overall service loadings of 20% seats occupied is actually quite good and 30% is almost a miracle. 

Pictures from Orebro, Sweden, taken this summer.  Fish ladder on the river (we have one in Melksham), pedstrian area with eating out and cycling, buses in the centre, and bus timetables every 20 minutes during the day and running from early in the morning until after midnight.