Official Statistics

Domestic Transport Usage by Mode

Updated 14 January 2026

These statistics are official statistics. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics. More information about these statistics can be found in the methodology note.

Usage of transport by mode from January 2025

Usage is shown as a percentage of pre-COVID-19 baseline; baselines used vary between modes (see the methodology note for further information). For rail, usage is shown as a 7-day rolling average ending on the indicated date. For all other modes, daily usage for weekdays (excluding bank holidays) is shown.

For the period 28 September to 9 November 2025, the Transport for London portion of the LENNON data that is used to produce the National Rail figures was estimated using the ‘Date of Travel’ rather than the ‘Date of Settlement’. This adjustment was required due to an incident that affected the completeness of LENNON settlement data in this timeframe. The impact on overall trend analysis is expected to be minimal.

National Rail data from August 2024 remains to be provisional until updated adjustment factors for the Elizabeth line are available.

Figure 1: Transport usage progressively recovers towards pre-COVID-19 level, across all modes

Transport usage as a proportion of pre-COVID-19 levels, Great Britain, January 2025 to January 2026

Description of figure 1: This figure presents a series of 4 line charts which show transport usage as a proportion of pre-COVID-19 levels, for motor vehicles, buses (excluding London), National Rail (excluding the Elizabeth line) and Transport for London (tube and buses) over the last 12 months. Over the past year, public transport mode usage (National Rail, buses and TfL) has remained below pre-COVID-19 levels, whereas motor vehicles usage has remained closer to pre-COVID-19 levels.

For all modes, usage fluctuates day-to-day, and bus usage outside of London is heavily impacted by school holidays throughout the year. Sharp changes in modal usage are as a result of weather events, industrial action or other events. More detail about this can be found in the footnotes of the published data table.

Table 1 below compares the range of usage during the current and previous publishing periods^{[footnote 1]} for each mode as a percentage of the pre-COVID-19 baseline. For all modes, except rail, transport usage excludes weekends and bank holidays, with rail presenting a 7-day rolling average of usage for all days.

The exclusion of weekends and bank holidays for all modes, except rail, is to prevent direct comparisons between these days and weekdays. This is because usage over weekends and bank holidays is less representative of typical weekday usage patterns (see the methodology note for further information). Weekend usage across all modes provided in this series is available in the tables that accompany this release.

The publishing periods vary between some modes due to data lags, which are specified in Table 1.

Table 1: Latest transport usage, by mode

Mode	Publishing period	Latest usage at date	Commentary
Rail (GB excluding Elizabeth Line)	1 Dec to 24 Dec 2025	96% (Wednesday 24 December 2025)	Passenger journeys in the week ending Wednesday 24 December 2025 were 96% of those observed in the equivalent week in 2019. In the current publishing period weekly average usage figures have been between 87% to 102%, compared to 86% to 96% in the last publishing period. These figures exclude Elizabeth Line services usage.
Bus (GB excluding London)	9 Dec 2025 to 12 Jan 2026	82% (Monday 12 January 2026)	Bus boardings outside of London on Monday 12 January 2026 were 82% of the volume observed on the equivalent day in the third week of January 2020. This is 1 percentage point lower compared to the equivalent day in the previous year (83% on Monday 13 January 2025). In the current publishing period weekday bus usage has been between 44% to 91% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to between 81% to 95% in the last publishing period.
London Bus	6 Dec 2025 to 9 Jan 2026	76% (Friday 9 January 2026)	TfL bus boardings on Friday 9 January 2026 were 76% of the equivalent day in 2019. In the current publishing period weekday TfL bus usage has been between 73% to 102% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to between 79% to 85% in the last publishing period.
London Tube	6 Dec 2025 to 9 Jan 2026	68% (Friday 9 January 2026)	Tube entries and exits on Friday 9 January 2026 were 68% of the equivalent day in 2019. In the current publishing period weekday tube usage has been between 66% to 110% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to between 78% to 88% in the last publishing period.
Motor Traffic (GB)	9 Dec 2025 to 12 Jan 2026	95% (Monday 12 January 2026)	On Monday 12 January 2026 traffic volumes were 95% of the levels during the first week of February 2020. This is unchanged compared to the equivalent day in the previous year (95% on Monday 13 January 2025). Weekday usage in this publishing period has been between 71% to 103% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to 98% to 103% in the last publishing period.

1. National Rail and TfL data are lagged compared to other modes due to the availability of data at time of publishing. For National Rail, the current period covers Monday 1 December 2025 to Wednesday 24 December 2025, while the previous publishing period covers Monday 3 November 2025 to Sunday 30 November 2025. For TfL data, the current period covers Saturday 6 December 2025 to Friday 9 January 2026, while the previous publishing period covers Saturday 8 November 2025 to Friday 5 December 2025. ↩