THE bus business is booming.

Hard-up workers are leaving the car at home and turning to public transport to beat the credit crunch and bus operators are thriving on the trade.

Eastleigh’s Bluestar has seen passenger numbers shoot up in the last year and has even expanded its services by taking over Uni-link on a ten-year contract, investing in a fleet of new generation buses, putting more vehicles on popular routes and adding more night buses at the weekend.

Passenger numbers on some of its busiest routes have gone up by almost a fifth, while on average they have seen growth of about seven per cent.

Operation manager Alex Hornby said: “Buses seem to be in a better position to beat the crunch than other companies and we hope the future continues to look as bright as it does at the moment.”

First Bus, which had a major shake-up earlier in the year to cut costs, has also seen its passenger numbers going up.

The company attributes this growth in part to the introduction of concessionary fares for the over-60s and the increased cost of fuel over the summer driving people onto buses.

A First Bus spokesman said: “We are not immune to the pressures of the tightening economy but we have seen a slight growth in passenger numbers as more people opt to use the bus in favour of other forms of transport.

“As the economy tightens and the number of redundancies rises, it is possible that fewer people will need to commute to and from work. This may have an impact on passenger numbers.”

Phil Stockley, operations director of Black Velvet, said as they only started the company this year he had nothing to compare figures to but added: “Lots of people are getting on our buses.

It is a good time to be a bus operator.”