Domestic Transport Usage by Mode
Updated 10 December 2025
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-use-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic/domestic-transport-usage-by-mode
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 December 2024
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.
National Rail data from 6 October 2025 has not been reported due to incomplete data being supplied. These figures will be provided in a future release once the data has been made available.
Figure 1: Transport usage progressively recovers to pre-COVID-19 level, across all modes
Transport usage as a proportion of pre-COVID-19 levels, Great Britain, December 2024 to December 2025
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).
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus (GB excluding London) | 11 Nov to 8 Dec 2025 | 90% (Monday 8 December 2025) | Bus boardings outside of London on Monday 8 December 2025 were 90% of the volume observed on the equivalent day in the third week of January 2020. This is 2 percentage points lower compared to the equivalent day in the previous year (92% on Monday 9 December 2024). In the current publishing period weekday bus usage has been between 81% to 95% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to between 74% to 94% in the last publishing period. |
| London Bus | 8 Nov to 5 Dec 2025 | 84% (Friday 5 December 2025) | TfL bus boardings on Friday 5 December 2025 were 84%. In the current publishing period weekday TfL bus usage has been between 79% to 85% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to between 73% to 85% in the last publishing period. |
| London Tube | 8 Nov to 5 Dec 2025 | 83% (Friday 5 December 2025) | Tube entries and exits on Friday 5 December 2025 were 83% of the equivalent day in 2019. In the current publishing period weekday tube usage has been between 78% to 88% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to between 76% to 86% in the last publishing period. |
| Motor Traffic (GB) | 11 Nov to 8 Dec 2025 | 103% (Monday 8 December 2025) | On Monday 8 December 2025 traffic volumes were 103% of the levels during the first week of February 2020. This is 1 percentage point higher compared to the equivalent day in the previous year (102% on Monday 9 December 2024). Weekday usage in this publishing period has been between 98% to 103% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to 99% to 102% in the last publishing period. |
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TfL data are lagged compared to other modes due to the availability of data at time of publishing. The current period therefore covers Saturday 8 November 2025 to Friday 5 December 2025, while the previous publishing period covers Saturday 11 October 2025 to Friday 7 November 2025. ↩