Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the Answer of 17 February 2020 to Question 13938 of that session, what recent estimate he has made of the average number of passengers on a public service bus route.
The average bus occupancy in England for 2021/22 was 9.5. This was an increase on the previous year, when it was 5.7. Both of these figures are impacted by movement restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, the average bus occupancy had remained steady in England at about 12.5 from 2017/18 to 2019/20.