Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The trends in bus patronage are variable across countries and within
countries. For example, in the UK, bus use is increasing, but this is principally
because of a substantial growth in use in London, whilst many parts of the
country have suffered a slight but continuous decline in recent years. Local bus
services (measured in vehicle km) increased by 7 per cent, whereas non-local
services declined by 3 per cent in the period 1998/99-2007/08. The pattern is
uneven. There are signs that bus and coach travel is reviving in Europe, fol-
lowing several years of decline. In France, for example, demand rose by 12 per
cent between 2006 and 2008. In Spain, there has been a major increase in
demand for inter-urban coach travel, amounting to a 77 per cent increase in
patronage overall in the past two decades. Thus, according to Mintel (2009a),
buses and coaches generated 539 billion passenger km in Europe in 2007. The
two most often quoted causes of growth are service-level improvements and
fare reductions (Currie and Rose, 2008).
There are some data regarding the USA, but there is no sub-division
between trips for tourism purposes in relation to other travel purposes. In the
USA, bus and coach travel is recorded under the heading 'Bus' in terms of pas-
senger miles. Over a ten-year period between 1998/99 and 2007/08, bus
passenger miles declined from 148,608 to 147,905 million. A study under-
taken by DePaul University (2007) concluded that the advent of the
price-sensitive Megabus network had helped to re-stimulate the market for
intercity coaches. Other major US companies such as Apex and Greyhound
have invested to build on their existing markets.
Given the dearth of publicly available information regarding the scale and
scope of bus operation, there have been calls for more data. This has been the
subject of detailed discussion in the supply sector and there is now agreement
that statistics regarding bus and coach travel will be collected as part of
EUROSTAT in future years (Economic and Social Council, 2009).
Environment
Buses are an eco-efficient form of travel (Gössling et al, 2005). Coaches, in
particular, operate on high loadings and therefore have lower carbon emis-
sions than other forms of motorized travel (see Table 4.2, Chapter 4). Most
studies which point to the green credentials of bus and coach in low-carbon
travel are written up by, or on behalf of, suppliers. For example, in the USA,
Nathan Associates (2007) undertook a study for the American Bus Association
which estimated that a motor coach achieves 148 passenger miles to the gal-
lon, a figure calculated to be four times more efficient than air or the private
car. In the UK, the Confederation of Passenger Transport (2008) cites an
example of travel between London and the Lake District, using data from the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs/National Atmospheric
Emissions Inventory/Energy Saving Trust. This 300-mile (480km) trip by car
(assuming average occupancy) had a carbon footprint of 53kg per person,
whereas the coach was only 14kg per person. The Confederation of Passenger
Transport estimated, as a comparator, that the coach generates about one-
sixth of the emissions per passenger of air travel and one-quarter of emissions
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