Bus Services: Passengers

(asked on 24th June 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of trends in coach passenger volumes in England.


Answered by
Trudy Harrison Portrait
Trudy Harrison
This question was answered on 4th July 2022

The Government recognises the importance of promoting the return of passengers to public transport following the pandemic and is engaging regularly with the bus and coach sector to assess how it can best support the sector’s recovery from the pandemic.

Data for the week commencing 13th June suggests that bus passenger volumes in Great Britain outside London were at around 80% of levels seen in the third week of January 2020 (the pre-Covid reference week).

Passenger volumes for buses in London were also at around 80% of pre-Covid levels. Both of these figures have been relatively stable over the last 6 months, but have increased since the equivalent period in 2021, when passenger volumes were around 60-65% of pre-Covid levels. The full data series going back to March 2020 can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-use-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic.

The Department does not routinely collect data on coach passenger volumes but the Department's National Travel Survey contains information about trends in public transport usage. This includes trends in bus use in London, other local bus use outside London, and non-local bus usage (a proxy for coach usage). The latest data from the survey can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-travel-survey-statistics.

The Government provided around £2bn to support the bus sector during the pandemic. The Government is committed to delivering improvements to bus services around the country and is meeting its commitments set out in the National Bus Strategy, one of which includes supporting the sector to proactively promote the use of buses.

Reticulating Splines