Bus passengers, we need your views!

05 March 2020

Each year we talk to around 50,000 passengers across England (outside London), Scotland and Wales about their most recent bus journey for our Bus Passenger Survey.

We publish the results, and of course there is a lot of interest in how each bus operator and transport authority area has performed. We will launch this year’s results at an event in Birmingham later this month – click here to find out more. Attendees will also hear more about our work to explore bus passengers’ priorities for improvement. Click here to read the latest report – more analysis of young people’s and non-users’ priorities will follow later this month.

But what do we do with the information next – how does it make a difference to your journey?

Beneath the headline satisfaction figure, there is a ton of detail on every aspect of bus passenger experience. We work with the industry and other decisionmakers to interpret that information and ensure it is used to improve services. This year we will hold around 94 meetings with operating groups, bus operating companies, local authorities and governments.

In recent years:

• one bus operator tells us that, having seen a drop in its score for cleanliness on board its buses, it increased the number of quality checks to drive up cleaning standards
• another operator used the data to help design its fares and ticket ‘products’ to help push up passenger ratings of value for money
• in an area where the BPS highlighted antisocial behaviour as a concern, the authority used the data to inform its work on tackling it. The next year’s satisfaction scores saw an increase in satisfaction with personal safety at the bus stop and less passengers saying they were worried about things like rowdy behaviour on board or feet on seats.

You can read more about how your opinions are used to drive real change in our new report What bus passengers think: how our passenger insight is used to improve services.

We know that those who use the bus like it, so we have also been doing some work of our own to encourage more people to give it a try. Visit the Give Bus a Go page to find out more.