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2. Background
2.1 Section 3 and Tables 1 to 10 describe the trends in Scottish bus and coach services over the past ten financial years, from 1994-95 to 2004-05, using statistics which were provided by the Department for Transport ( DfT) and are produced from its survey of bus and coach operators. A summary table provides some key figures over a longer period, including 1985-86, the last full year prior to the deregulation of bus services outside London, which took place during 1986-87. The tables include, in many cases, comparable statistics for Great Britain and/or for "Great Britain outside London", where this is more appropriate.
2.2 Section 4 and Tables 11 to 30 and A to F provide Scottish Household Survey ( SHS) statistics, for the calendar year 2004, and some earlier years, on a range of topics; including the walking time to, and frequency of bus services at, the nearest bus stop; use of and views on local bus services; travel to work by bus and car; commuters' reasons for using the bus and car commuters' reasons for not using public transport; reasons for not using buses more often; how safe from crime people feel travelling by bus in the evening; adults who hold a concessionary travel pass which allows free off-peak travel on local bus services; the proportion of adults' journeys which are made by bus; and other bus related results from the survey. The figures given relate to a number of different periods ( e.g. 2004, the two years 2003 and 2004, and the period April 2003 to December 2004), depending upon when the relevant questions were asked and the sample size required for the analysis.
2.3 Section 5 provides some notes and definitions; section 6 describes the DfT survey of public service vehicle operators, and section 7 gives further information about the SHS.
2.4 The main changes in this edition are the inclusion of some new tables which give more results from the SHS:
- inclusion of "trend" tables, which cover the six years of the SHS for some topics: frequency and accessibility of bus services, views on public transport, usual means of travel to work, frequency of evening travel by bus, and percentage of journeys made by bus;
- improvement of the concessionary travel pass table to include the percentage of adults who used a pass on the day prior to interview;
- inclusion of a new table which shows the percentages of adults who made a journey on a local bus, and an off-peak journey on a local bus, on the day prior to interview.
2.5 Unfortunately, some of the figures in the final column of Table 27 in the previous edition of this bulletin were incorrect. Please see section 9 for details.
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