Commuting by rail or bus takes twice as long as driving in parts of UK, figures show

Commuting by public transport in some parts of Britain can take twice as long as driving, according to new statistics.

Data from the Department for Transport showed that outside of London, it can take commuters double the time to get to work on buses or trains compared to driving.

In Torridge, Devon, it took almost three times as long to use public transport as it did to drive, at 37 and 14 minutes respectively.

In Cumbria, the average journey time by public transport was 26 minutes, but just 12 minutes by car.

North Yorkshire, Shropshire and Cornwall also had similar differences in travel time.

But in Inner London, journey times were almost the same by both methods of transport, at 10.4 minutes by public transport and nine minutes by car.

The statistics compared public transport and driving times to reach medium sized centres of employment (500-4999 jobs), primary schools, secondary schools, further education, GPs, hospitals, food stores and town centres.

Rail punctuality sank to a 13-year-low in 2018, with just 80 per cent of trains running on time.

Across all operators the key Public Performance Measure (PPM) fell to 80.9 per cent compared with 84.3 per cent in 2017.

Bus services have also been slashed, with more than 3,000 routes cut in the past nine years and subsidies falling by £20.5 million in the year 2017-18.

A DfT spokesman said: “This Government is determined to improve journeys for all motorists, which is why we’re investing nearly £29 billion to reduce congestion on our roads up to 2025.

“We are also investing £3.1 billion in local projects to make road travel smoother, while our £2.5 billion Transforming Cities Fund will develop innovative public transport schemes to further tackle congestion in some of England's biggest cities.”