Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of lower bus fares on car usage.

Evidence from the evaluation of the first 10 months of the £2 bus fare cap, which ran from January 2023 to December 2024, reported that lower bus fares encouraged some people to switch to bus travel from other modes.

Across four surveys conducted as part of the evaluation, between 29% and 38% of respondents who reported making additional bus journeys said that, without the fare cap, they would have made those journeys using a different mode of transport. Among those respondents, the car was the most commonly reported alternative mode, with between 21% and 31% reporting that they would otherwise have travelled by car or van as a driver and a further 15% to 18% reporting that they would have travelled as a passenger.