Carousel Buses announces service improvements for Windsor and Maidenhead

Carousel Buses has announced several improvements to its bus services in Windsor and Maidenhead, as new government figures reveal the area is one of the UK’s fastest growing in terms of bus use.

Popular Maidenhead local service 9 to Cranbrook Drive and Halifax Road will be revised to create a separate service 8 and 9, providing faster and more frequent links from these areas to the town centre and rail station.

Service 15 between Slough, Eton, Eton Wick, Dorney and Taplow will now extend every hour to Maidenhead via the A4, providing convenient additional links.

And service 127 between Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading will have a new Saturday service added, with the route amended on Mondays to Saturdays to additionally serve the local shopping centre at Woodley.

There are also several other amendments to timetables in the Maidenhead area, to improve punctuality and reliability, and customers are advised to check the Carousel Buses website for full details.

The news comes on the back of new national statistics revealing that Windsor and Maidenhead are among the fastest-growing areas for bus passenger journeys in the country.

The Department for Transport recently published its annual statistics on local buses in Great Britain for the year ending March 2025.

The numbers reveal Windsor and Maidenhead recorded one and a half million bus passenger journeys between 2024 and 2025, representing a 14.1 per cent increase with the same period in 2023 and 2024. The area’s surge in bus passenger journeys is one of the highest in the country, with the national average just one per cent.

The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead saw 1.18m local bus miles driven in 2024/25, which was an increase of 40.8 per cent year-on-year.

Carousel Buses is one of the key bus providers in the Royal Borough and wider Berkshire, operating local services to High Wycombe, Staines, Slough and central Reading.

Luke Marion, Managing Director at Carousel Buses, said: “We continue to go from strength to strength at Carousel Buses, thanks to our continued investment in our people, fleet and growing our network.

“We pride ourselves on delivering an ever-improving service and making bus travel an attractive alternative to travelling via private vehicle and the new stats demonstrate it is having a positive impact.”

Councillor Geoff Hill, Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport and Customer Service Centre, said: “I am so pleased to see that bus use in the Royal Borough has now exceeded pre-pandemic levels, with 1.5 million bus journeys made last year – one of the first council areas in the country to do so.

“With major bus improvements implemented earlier this year, and a number of promotional initiatives, residents have been able to enjoy an upgraded travelling experience that is easier and more sustainable. This will have long-term benefits for all of our residents and visitors, in line with our commitment to create a cleaner, greener and safer borough.”

In England, there were 3.7 billion local bus passenger journeys in the year ending March 2025, an increase of one per cent compared with the year ending March 2024, indicating stability following a few years of sharp increases as the industry recovered from Covid-19.

In the year ending March 2025, there were one billion bus service miles ran in England, an increase of two per cent compared with the year ending March 2024.