Accredited official statistics

NTS 2025: Trends in public transport trips

Updated 10 September 2026

Applies to England

The introduction of the digital travel diary in 2025 appears to be associated with a lower rate of recording for certain types of trips. The impact on the recording of public transport trips is unclear, with increases in London bus and underground, and a decrease in surface rail. The mode share for public transport overall has increased slightly, as a result of the observed falls in walking and car trip rates. Users are advised to interpret changes in trip rates between 2024 and 2025 with this in mind.

Further details of work to understand the impact of the digital diary can be found in the quality report and technical report for 2025.

Main findings

• Trips on buses outside London remained unchanged between 2024 and 2025, at 28 trips per person.

• Trips on buses in London increased from 13 to 15 trips per person in 2025, an increase of 12% compared to 2024.

• Trips on surface rail decreased from 21 to 18 trips per person in 2025, a decrease of 11% compared to 2024.

• Around 48% of public transport trips used a single mode of transport, and the remaining 52% used more than one transport mode.

• Almost two-thirds of public transport trips using more than one mode started with walking (63%).

• Around 21% of multi-modal public transport trips in England involved more than one public transport mode, which rises to 27% in London.

Trends in public transport use

Chart 3.1: Trips per person per year by selected public transport modes: England, 2002 to 2025 (NTS0303)

Public transport trips made up 10% of trips and 17% of distance travelled, on average in 2025. Surface rail accounted for 10% of distance travelled, with 59% of rail miles travelled on trips over 50 miles.

Buses within and outside London

• Trends in other local bus (outside London) saw a gradual fall from 46 trips per person in 2002 to 32 trips per person in 2019, followed by a sharp decrease to 15 trips per person in 2020 and most recently remained unchanged between 2024 and 2025, at 28 trips per person.

• There were 15 trips per person on buses in London in 2025. This was an increase of 12% compared to 2024 (13 trips per person).

• Trends in London bus trips saw a gradual increase from 2002 to 2010 and have since shown a slight decreasing trend, with a sharp decrease in 2020. This suggests that the medium term trend may be more stable and is broadly similar to the trend observed in other statistics such as bus statistics.

• Trip rates for buses (in and outside London) remained below pre-pandemic (2019) levels. This is consistent with trends in passenger numbers from bus statistics which, remained lower than before the pandemic (year ending March 2020).

London Underground

• Trends on the London Underground were relatively stable from 2002 to 2019 and have since recovered from the 2020 low. There were 11 trips per person in 2025, an increase of 15% compared to the previous year (10 trips per person in 2024).

Surface rail

• Surface rail trips increased from 13 trips per person in 2002 to 21 in 2019, but fell to 11 trips person in 2020, and increased to 18 trips per person in 2025. This is an 11% decrease compared to 2024 (21 trips per person).

• Trends on the decrease in surface rail trips are not directly comparable to rail statistics which show an increase in rail passenger journeys in the financial year ending 2025, compared to the previous year. This is because estimates from the National Travel Survey can be more volatile for modes with relatively low population use. Rail accounts for a small share of all trips, meaning year-on-year changes in NTS estimates may be affected by sampling variability, and in 2025 may also be affected by the introduction of the digital diary.

Chart 3.2: Miles travelled per person per year by selected public transport modes: England, 2002 to 2025 (NTS0303)

Buses within and outside London

• Distance travelled by local bus outside London (other local bus) increased by 5% to 146 miles per person in 2025 compared to 2024.

• Distance travelled by bus in London increased by 15% in 2025 compared to 2024 (56 miles per person in 2025).

• Overall, average miles travelled on other local buses and buses in London declined by 31% and 13% respectively from 2002 to 2025.

London Underground

• Distance travelled on the London Underground increased by 17% in 2025 compared to 2024 with 100 miles per person.

Surface rail

• People travelled the longest distance on surface rail on average compared to other public transport modes, with 567 miles per person in 2025. This was an 11% decrease compared to 2024.

Multi-modal public transport trips

Chart 3.3: Flow of travel by mode for public transport trips recorded on day 1 of the travel diary: England, 2025 (ad hoc analyses) NTSQ09080

Flow of public transport trips between modes of transport

This analysis is based on data from the first day of the travel diary as this is the only day on which walks of under a mile are recorded. No walks of under 50 yards are recorded. This analysis looks into the combination of modes used within public transport trips to understand how people travel between modes, and how often single modes of transport are used within public transport trips. The most complex public transport trips recorded in this data had six stages. Less than 0.1% of public transport trips had 6 stages and these have been trimmed from charts 3.3 and 3.4 for simplicity. Each column represents a stage, and the thickness of lines is proportional to the number of public transport trips.

Public transport trips are defined as being those where any of the public transport modes form the main mode of the trip, or the mode which is used for the longest stage of the trip by distance. With stages of equal length, the mode of the latest stage is used. Public transport modes include bus in London, other local bus, non-local bus, London Underground, surface rail, taxi or minicab and other public transport.

• In 2025, 10% of trips involved public transport as the main mode.

• In 2025, 48% of public transport trips used a single mode of transport, and the remaining 52% used more than one transport mode. These proportions were 42% and 58% in 2024.

• Walk was the most frequent mode to begin a public transport trip with 33%, followed by other local bus (24%), taxi or minicab (13%) and bus in London (12%).

Chart 3.4: Flow of travel by mode for multi-modal public transport trips recorded on day 1 of the travel diary: England, 2025 (ad hoc analyses) NTSQ09080

Multi-modal public transport trips

• Almost two-thirds of public transport trips using more than one mode started with walking (63%), followed by other local bus (10%), bus in London (6%), surface rail (6%) and London Underground (5%).

• Surface rail was most often the second mode used within multi-modal public transport trips with 27%, followed by other local bus (22%), walk (18%), bus in London (15%) and London Underground (12%). The majority of these public transport trips preceded and were followed by a walking stage or other public transport modes.

Chart 3.5: Percentage of multi-modal public transport trips recorded on day 1 of the travel diary which involve more than one public transport mode, by selected region of residence: England, 2025 (ad hoc analyses) NTSQ09080

Multi-modal public transport trips involving more than one public transport mode

• In 2025, 21% of multi-modal public transport trips by England residents involved more than one public transport mode (25% in 2024). This rises to 27% by London residents (32% in 2024), suggesting a slightly higher proportion of more complex public transport trips in this region.

NTS modernisation – we want your feedback

From autumn 2026, the NTS is launching a modernisation programme, which aims to review the survey’s methodology, data collection and outputs. The intention is to make the survey more flexible and scalable, reduce burden on respondents, and utilise modern technologies where appropriate.

The first stages involve capturing the views of our users and stakeholders on their use of, and need for, NTS data and statistics. We are contacting a number of known stakeholders directly, however we are keen to gather views from as wide a range of users as possible.

We want to ensure that the survey meets the needs of users, and any feedback provided will help inform the future design and development of the survey. If you have any feedback or wish to discuss this with the team, please email National Travel Survey statistics.

Background information

The 2025 National Travel Survey (NTS) is the latest in a series of household surveys of personal travel by residents of England travelling within Great Britain, from data collected via interviews and a 7-day travel diary. The NTS is part of a continuous survey that began in 1988, following ad-hoc surveys from the 1960s, which enables analysis of patterns and trends.

Some key uses of the data include describing patterns, for example how different groups of people travel, monitoring trends in travel, including sustainable modes; assessing the potential equality impacts of different groups; and contributing to the evaluation of policies.

These official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in September 2018. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and are labelled ‘Accredited Official Statistics’.

Further information is available, including:

• data tables

• notes and definitions

• guidance and quality information

• future developments

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Contact details

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