N EVER MIND the snazzy, expensive railway line that the government grudgingly approved on February 11th. What really stirs politicians’ hearts is the humble bus. Both the just-sacked chancellor of the exchequer, Sajid Javid, and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, are the sons of bus drivers, as they are not shy of saying. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, claims to love buses so much that he models them out of wine crates. This week he promised to throw more money at them.

This will go down well. Buses account for more public-transport trips than trains, tubes and trams put together. People love them, in theory: one poll by Transport Focus, a consumer group, found that 74% of young people think they are a good way of getting around and 85% believe it is important for a place to have a good bus service. There is just one problem. In practice, Britons are taking buses less and less (see chart). Powerful forces are driving this trend—probably too powerful to be counteracted with a dollop of public money.

Until recently, the decline in bus use could be put down to bad policies and austerity. In 1986, with Margaret Thatcher in her pomp, bus transport outside London was privatised and deregulated. Bus companies piled in to the best routes; the less popular ones were neglected, especially after the financial crisis, when subsidies were cut. Fares have risen, which deters more people from taking the bus. “It’s a cycle of decline”, says Darren Shirley of the Campaign for Better Transport.