The rise and fall of Megabus: how a budget coach company defined a generation

As maiden voyages go, Megabus’s isn’t exactly riveting. The budget blue-and-yellow bus enjoyed its inaugural journey in August 2003, with an exceptionally mundane trip from London to Oxford. Promising ‘a new concept in bus travel’, the milestone moment was commemorated much later in a terrifically clunky, droll press release: ‘Fifteen years ago, people who wanted to travel by coach stood in a queue at a coach station and waited to pay the same fare as everyone else.’ It’s not exactly Concorde, is it?

While it may not have been all caviar and champagne, it was genuinely a moment. It signalled a new, cheap, cheerful and – crucially – functional British institution along the lines of Wetherspoons or Greggs. Before its arrival, the main option for non-drivers was the National Express, which cost at least a tenner for an intercity trip. 

This new ‘Ryanair of the roads’ promised even more routes at a smidgeon of the cost. ‘This seems too good to be true,’ said Chantal Kashma, one of the first passengers, about its nationwide launch. But it was true; tickets originally sold for a mere £1, the amount of coinage you might literally find behind a coach seat.

Over the decades since then, Megabus has become a ride or die for cash-strapped students, long distance lovers, late-night ravers, low-income grafters and leftfield drifters. It enables four million Brits to chug across the UK every year. And it’s always been a trusty way to travel during the festive period. ‘Sid the Quid’ – the rotund Megabus mascot complete with a dandy bow tie and cap – would greet me as I headed home for the holidays, ready to endure a diabolical hangover via Banbury.

But this year, you might have to do a Chris Rea and drive home for Christmas (in your not so mega car). Because, on December 4, Megabus officially slammed the brakes on every route in England and Wales, aside from its cross-border services, citing low customer demand. Cities like Derby, Leicester and Nottingham are no longer served.

Megabus has slammed the brakes on every route in England and Wales

It seems to be part of a wider downturn in fortunes for the coach operator; in 2018, Megabus was chastised for promising £1 fares when they were harder to find than a service station loo (Time Out couldn’t reach someone at Megabus to comment for this article). Only the first six seats were actually a pound and the rest were a bit of pot luck. A quick trawl through my Megabus receipts reveals I paid £7.70 from London to Birmingham in the same year, which is still pretty thrifty.

Some folk won’t be surprised at the loss of demand. Getting a Megabus has never been for the faint of heart. It takes a hot second to get used to sitting centimetres from a chemical toilet the size of a hamster cage, lactic acid shooting through your legs, all while sandwiched between two snoring strangers blasting Instagram Reels on max volume. And it certainly isn’t exactly renowned for its punctuality. To paraphrase an old saying, you wait ages for a Megabus… and then none come along at once.

Its demise however, is not something to be celebrated. Fewer Megabuses means more of a need to get a train, something which is becoming increasingly extortionate. Just this week, a new study revealed that UK rail fares are now the most expensive in all of Europe (the trains are usually less nice, too). They’re also so frequently late, that compensation payouts have now hit £100 million a year. For many people living outside of the major cities, they take forever to snail their way from town to town, which made the Megabus a vital service. And while the UK government has pledged £1 billion to improve bus services across the country, it’s part of a wider issue of public transport outside London being left in the dust.

For Megabus fans, it was always about more than just getting us to where we need to be. There was something charming and endearing about it. ‘Since I can remember, the humble Megabus has been my most trusted steed, gladly ferrying me between London and Bristol countless times without fuss – even on the one occasion where we got stuck for almost two hours due to an apparently monumental blockage in the onboard loo,’ says El Hunt, journalist and Megabus fan. ‘This cheerful, bright blue budget bus has safely taken me from A to B during break-ups, new loves, and the most satanic hangover of my entire life. And sometimes for less than you’d expect to pay for a cup of coffee,’ she adds.

It has taken me from A to B during break-ups and the most satanic hangover of my life

The Megabus has always had more characters than commuters. While chatting to a stranger on a train can be a bit of a hit or miss, sparking up a conversation (and a cheeky cig at the service station) wasn’t frowned upon when it came to the Megabus. But most importantly, the blue-and-yellow bus was an absolute saviour when your bank balance was in the red. ‘What’s the alternative when you’re a 30-something millennial who has outgrown your railcard and would prefer not to add to impending climate change doom by buying a car?’ Hunt questions.

Perhaps, it veered off course with some of its side hustles. Megabus Gold was launched in 2013, a sleeper coach complete with luxurious burgundy and gold livery, setting you back £15 for a hammock-style bed. Even The Telegraph described the decor as ‘tasteful’ but it made such a loss that it was axed in 2017. Meanwhile, Megasightseeing, an insanely cheap open-top tour bus which launched in London in 2018, had its plug pulled after just three years, in 2021. Even an ongoing social media competition to name its buses did little to win people back over. The monikers, plastered on the side of each vehicle, range from ‘Al Bus Dumbledore’ to ‘Captain Sir Tom Moore’ to, fair play, ‘Bussy the Vampire Slayer’.

But Megabus wasn’t the only driver in its own downfall. Its old foe National Express, once outdone by Megabus, is enjoying a revival. Offering a slightly speedier journey and now at a pretty similar price, with tickets starting at £4.90, it added more than 16,000 seats per week from December 4 and reported a 25 percent increase in customers last year.

And then there’s the Euro Grinch that has stolen Megabus’s Christmas, a big green nemesis that’s riding a wave of popularity right now: FlixBus. Founded in Munich in 2011, FlixBus has become a worldwide phenomenon, with its low-cost coaches now turning over €2 billion and carrying 81 million passengers across the world every single year. ‘This feels like a new golden age for coach travel,’ says Andreas Schorling, Managing Director of FlixBus UK. ‘Over five million UK passengers have travelled with us since we launched three years ago and they keep coming back. By next summer, we’ll have over 200 vehicles on the road, more than twice the size of the Megabus network at their peak.’ It’s why many of us will be getting a FlixBus for Christmas – which even runs on the big day – instead of the Megabus we once asked for.

It’s not just a numbers game, though. FlixBus has also managed to do what Megabus couldn’t. It’s made getting a coach – dare we say it – chic? ‘It would seem unlikely that a bus could build and sustain a place in pop-culture,’ says Eglantina Becheru, Director of Brand & Creative at FlixBus. ‘But against the odds, Flix has created one.’

It seems to come down to Flix’s unhinged social media presence; its Instagram page is stacked with wild, Gen-Z-esque memes that feature an anthropomorphised Flix and post-internet references. There’s Taylor Swift superimposed in front of the Windows XP background; regular shitpost horoscopes; the ‘Slaybus’ getting a girly glow-up at the gym and ironic ‘hopecore’ affirmations just in time for the festive season. Tapping into the fact that it ferries young people back from gigs, raves and holidays, it’s become a party bus with a sense of humour for the Skibidi Toilet generation. And the cool kids at the back of the bus seem to be lapping it up. ‘Is there Flixbus merch cause it would kinda eat,’ says one top comment on Instagram. Perhaps it also helps that FlixBus is a Brat shade of green, compared to Megabus’s WD-40 colourway.

A party bus for the Skibidi Toilet generation

There’s a sense of cynicism among Megabus fans like myself. FlixBus prices start at £4.49, a far cry from the £1 tickets old Sid used to sell – and TikTok users don’t hold back in pointing out that it’s not immune from delays, either. But at the end of the day, Flix does the job. People want to get from A to B without breaking the bank – which is what Megabus offered us for years (when it decided to show up, at least).

While Megabus’s cross-border journeys are still set to chug onwards for now, it’s hard to imagine they will last long. Farewell, Sid, and hello Flix: its funnier, trendier, rizzier rival.