Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what (a) steps his Department is taking to encourage people to use public transport instead of cars during the covid-19 outbreak and (b) estimate he has made of the number of passenger journeys by (a) bus, (b) car and (c) rail in Greater Manchester since March 2020.

The government is clear that under current restrictions people should not leave their homes unless for a permitted purpose. Throughout the pandemic we have not regulated to restrict access to the public transport network as this could have an impact on the ability for people to travel when they need to, or for key workers to access employment. We are advising that the public follow safer travel guidance when they do travel.

Weekly data on transport use at a national level since the start of pandemic is available here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-use-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic. However, it is not possible to break this national use down by all areas/regions due to sources of the data involved for near real-time reporting. Statistics on transport use by each mode in each area will be published in due course when the full data is available.