An old man with a grey beard sits on a bench in front of bus stops and a row of shops and cars. He is wearing blue jeans, a blue woollen jumper and a blue cap.
Pictured: 83-year-old Peter said his bus from L'islet to Town service was so reliable you could "almost set your watch" to it.

Stagecoach took over Guernsey’s bus service a year ago, but how do the public think they’re getting on?

Express popped down to the Town Terminus to ask regular bus travellers whether they thought the service had got better or worse?

Peter (83) has lived on the island for nearly 60 years and said some routes were “getting better and some routes are getting a lot worse”.

He told us he regularly took the P2 bus from his home in L’islet to St Peter Port.

The service was so reliable you could “almost set your watch” to it, he said.

However, the States and Stagecoach were considering stopping the route, which made Peter nervous, as some other services were more “erratic”, with buses “up to three-quarters of an hour late”.

If he could ask Stagecoach to improve anything, it would be “adjusting their timetables to suit the buses”, he said.

An old, bald man with a grey beard sits on a bench in front of bus stops and a row of shops. He is wearing sunglasses and a short-sleeved white shirt.
Pictured: 72-year-old retired postman John Coffey collects model buses and loves the island’s bus service.

John Coffey (72), from St Peter Port, told Express he “couldn’t be more happy” with the island’s buses.

He said the bus service had been “excellent” over the last 12 months, adding that it was “bang on time”.

Mr Coffey also praised Stagecoach’s new “blue buses”, which were “much better, much more comfortable”.

‘Guernsey Greys’

The recently-retired postman and folk singer said he looked back fondly on Guernsey’s iconic “grey buses” – which operated from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Mr Coffey said he fell in love with bus travel as a child in Glasgow, because of the city’s “trolley buses” and now collects models, with over 100 tiny buses in his collection.

A bus with a tree and blight blue sky above. A sign on it reads: This bus is operated by Stagecoach.
Pictured: Stagecoach took over Guernsey’s buses at the start of April 2025.

The current bus service has been run by Stagecoach for a year.

A spokesperson for Stagecoach said its buses had travelled over 1.3 million miles around the 10-mile-long island, carrying over 1.7 million passengers during that time.

They said both cleanliness and reliability had improved, with two more electric buses added to the fleet to help hit sustainability targets.

The spokesperson highlighted the “exceptional care” one of the customer services team took, when he personally drove an Autistic passenger to a GP appointment after the bus she planned to take was diverted.

The passenger, Emily Nuttall, from St Martin, said: “He’s a hero and he’s wonderful – that simple act of kindness made a massive difference to my day.”

Peter Knight, Managing Director at Stagecoach South West, said it was “wonderful to see how our employees go above and beyond every day for the community”.

Hit ground running

He said it had been an “incredible year” for the firm, with the team working “tirelessly to ensure customers get a clean, reliable service”.

Deputy Adrian Gabriel, President of Environment and Infrastructure, said he was “delighted” Stagecoach had “hit the ground running”.

“They’ve also used their extensive experience to help us propose changes to Guernsey’s bus route map and timetable to improve the service for users,” he added.