Satisfaction with public transport in Scotland has dropped by 10 percentage points over the past four years, while levels of walking have also fallen, official statistics show.
The findings come in the Scottish Household Survey 2018, which provides a range of statistics about people’s travel habits and attitudes.
The survey found that the percentage of Scottish adults who were very or fairly satisfied with their local public transport dropped from 75% in 2014 to 65% in 2018.
Although walking was next most popular mode of transport at 20% of journeys, this has dropped from 26% in 2012. Cycling accounted for just 1.4% of journeys.
Michael Matheson, cabinet secretary for transport, infrastructure and connectivity, said the Scottish Government remains ‘fully committed to delivering a sustainable, accessible and fairer transport system’.
He said: ‘We are investing more than £1bn in public and sustainable transport each year, the number of rail journeys continues to increase and last week’s Programme for Government included a commitment of more than £500m for bus priority measures which will reduce the impacts of congestion on bus services and encourage more people to make sustainable multi-modal journeys.'
Mr Matheson added that minsters rates to see rates of walking, cycling and shared transport improve as new infrastructure comes online.
During the year over half (53%) of journeys in the country were made by driving a car or van. Increasingly, drivers reported being alone in their vehicles, with the proportion of car trips that were ‘single-occupant’ rising from 56% in 1999 to 66% in 2018.
The gender difference in driving to work has closed over the last two decades, at the cost of more people of both genders doing so. In 1999, 60% of men drove to work, compared to 48% of women. The figures are now equal at 63%.
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