Title

Number of bus and coach vehicles by year

Last update

April 2024 April 2024

Next update

April 2025 (Provisional)

Publishing organisation

Welsh Government

Source 1

Public Service Vehicle Survey, Department for Transport

Contact email

stats.transport@gov.wales

Designation

National Statistics

Lowest level of geographical disaggregation

Wales

Geographical coverage

Wales

Languages covered

English and Welsh

Data licensing

You may use and re-use this data free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government License - see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence

General description

This dataset gives details on the numbers of bus and coach vehicles in Wales by year up to the financial year 2022-23. Data are presented as the numbers of vehicles (thousands) in Wales.

Data collection and calculation

Public service vehicle information is derived from annual returns made to the Department of Transport (DfT) by a sample of 700 holders of Public Service Vehicles operators licences (“the PSV survey”). This survey provides information on passenger journeys, vehicle miles, passenger receipts and operating costs. Separate smaller surveys managed by DfT collect information about fare changes, service reliability and quarterly patronage from the larger bus operators. Full details of the data sources and methods used can be found in the guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/buses-statistics-guidance.

Frequency of publication

Annual

Data reference periods

These statistics relate to cases in Wales during the 2022-23 financial year ending March 2023.

Users, uses and context

The DfT bus statistics represent the most comprehensive single source of official data on the bus industry in Great Britain and are used both within and outside the Welsh Government. It provides data which is used in monitoring trends, developing policy and providing accountability for the subsidy provided to the industry at a high level.

Revisions information

Data for previous periods are routinely updated. Data for the current financial or calendar year may be revised with the release of next year’s data set.

Weblinks

Public Service Vehicles, statistical release: http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/public-service-vehicles/?lang=en

Statistical quality

The PSV survey uses imputation techniques to derive key figures for operators who were either not selected in the sample for that year, or who did not respond. On occasion, imputations for earlier years can be improved using directly-reported data for later years. Minor revisions to back-data can occur as a result, although trends are rarely affected substantively.

For the key indicators (passenger journeys and vehicle miles operated) the data provided by operator’s covers around, or above, 90 per cent of the total figure, with the remainder imputed. Comparison with other sources suggests that, at aggregate (Great Britain) level, the statistics are likely to provide a reasonably robust measure of levels and broad trends.

However, figures representing smaller groups of operators and single year on year changes should be treated with caution as these are more susceptible to measurement errors (for example, an inaccurate return by an operator, or a change in an operator’s method of producing the figures required) which are more likely to even out at the national level. Regional, and particularly local authority, level figures should be interpreted with caution.

Keywords

Vehicles, Buses, Coaches

Name

TRAN0166