Public transport and ethnicity

17 May 2013

Not a subject that is often discussed. The public transport industry often knows little about who uses their services – there is no need to declare where and why you are travelling, there are few loyalty schemes at present and data collected about passengers is often very basic. We know that five-day-a-week commuters tend to be men; more women have part-time work (and therefore probably pay more for travel).

Passenger Focus’s rail National Passenger Survey (NPS) and Bus Passenger Survey (BPS) do ask questions about ethnicity.

	NPS	BPS	Census 2011
White (including other white)	90.4%	86.5%	86.0%
Mixed	1.4%	2.0%	2.2%
Asian/Asian British	3.6%	5.7%	7.5%
Black or black British	2.9%	4.4%	3.4%
Other ethnic group	1.7%	1.3%	1.0%

 

So the efforts of Northern and other operators to boost the use of public transport by ethnic minorities is welcome. Northern has a new report on a community ambassadors scheme; well worth a read. Public transport is offering choices to a wide range of the population it seems.