Your Bus Journey

24 June 2022

Our previous work, in autumn 2021 (trial of face-to-face recruitment of bus and rail passengers), showed that, in principle, passengers can be recruited face to face at bus stops. Most can then be directed to an online survey which they will complete soon afterwards.

This subsequent pilot built on this with three core objectives.

1. To test a possible approach to sampling these bus stops in a systematic way
2. To understand the productivity of fieldwork based on this more systematic sample of bus stops
3. To test additional recruitment options.

On the third point, other options include:

• Recruiting on board buses. This would be as a comparison and validation of the at-stop recruitment to cover routes likely to be excluded from the at-stop fieldwork.
• Recruiting passengers as they got off buses to try and include a broader range of stops at which passengers had originally boarded.

The trial was conducted in three different local authority areas around England, with the co-operation of the local authorities and bus operators in those areas.

The reports below provide details on how the survey was carried out, the responses we received and what we learnt from the trial.