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(Table 1 and Table 2; Charts A and B)
3.1 Walking time to the nearest bus stop
3.1.1 The SHS interviewer asks how long it would take him/her to walk to the nearest bus stop (or place where one could get on a bus). The left hand part of Table 1 shows the results. (The groupings shown in the table headings are used to avoid uncertainty about how answers like "around 5 minutes" are counted.) The first row of the table shows that, in 1999, over half of all households (54%) were said to be up to 3 minutes walk away from the nearest bus stop, and that just under a third of households (30%) were 4-6 minutes walk away from a bus stop. Therefore, over five-sixths of households said that they were within 6 minutes walk of a bus stop. 10% of households reported a 7-13 minutes walk, and only 4% said that the interviewer would have to walk for 14 minutes or longer. Just 1% of households did not know how long it would take to walk to the nearest bus stop. Another 1% said that there was no bus service. The numbers in italics at the right-hand end of the first row show that these results are produced from the answers given for 14,714 households.
3.1.2 The lower parts of Table 1 show how the walking time to the nearest bus stop varies for different types of household, for households with different levels of income, and for households in different types of neighbourhood. (The SHS uses the Scottish MOSAIC neighbourhood classification system for both the sampling and for analysis. Notes on the different classifications appear later, in the "Notes and Definitions": sections A.6 onwards.) Overall, about a seventh of households were at least 7 minutes walk away from a bus stop (about 14%: adding the 10% with a 7-13 minutes walk to the 4% with a 14+ minutes walk), but the corresponding figure for older smaller households and single pensioner households was more than a sixth (around 17-18%: 13% for 7-13 minutes plus 3-4% for 14+ minutes). The proportion of households at least 14 minutes walk away from a bus stop also tended to increase with income, to around a twelfth of those households with an annual net income of over £40,000. A similar effect is seen in the analysis by type of neighbourhood (see also Chart A): about 20% of households in "high income areas", and around 18% of households in "middle income areas", were at least 7 minutes walk from a bus stop. Only about half the "country dweller" households were within 6 minutes walk of a bus stop: over a third were at least 7 minutes walk away from a bus stop (12% with a 7-13 minutes walk plus 23% with a 14+ minutes walk), and a further 13% said that they did not have a bus service.
3.2 Frequency of bus services
3.2.1 The right-hand part of Table 1 analyses the frequency of bus services, as reported by householders. 19% of householders did not know how often one could get a bus from the nearest stop during the day. This percentage was highest for households in "high income areas" (29%), "country dweller" households (25%) and households in "institutional areas" (also 25%). In cases where the householder said that the frequency of service varied, the interviewer asked for the week-day off-peak frequency. Overall, 20% of households said that there was at least one bus every 13 minutes, 27% thought that there was one every 14-26 minutes, 28% answered that there was a bus every 27-63 minutes, and 5% indicated that the interval between buses was 64 minutes or longer. "Country dweller" households had by far the least frequent bus services: only about 2% of them said that there was at least one bus every 26 minutes, and almost a third (31%) reported that there were 64 or more minutes between buses.
3.3 Availability of bus services to the population
3.3.1 Table 1 looked at the availability of bus services to households, whereas Table 2 does so in terms of percentages of the population. Table 2 shows the frequency of service for those who live within 13 minutes walk of a bus stop. The left hand part of the table is restricted to those in households with walking times to the nearest bus stop of up to 6 minutes. Overall, nearly 85% of people lived within 6 minutes walk of a bus stop, and they included 17% in households where it was said there was at least one bus every 13 minutes, 24% with a bus every 14-26 minutes, 25% with a bus every 27-63 minutes, and 14% in households where the respondent did not know the frequency of the bus service. Just under 10% of people lived within 7-13 minutes walk of a bus stop, and 4% lived more than 14 minutes walk away.
3.3.2 As might be expected, there was little difference in the availability of bus services between the sexes or between the age-groups. However, the lower part of the table shows that there were considerable differences between "urban" and "rural" areas, using a six-way classification that was developed for the analysis of the SHS results. In this classification, a "small town" has a population between 3,000 and 10,000, and an area is described as "accessible" if it is within 30 minutes' drive of a settlement with a population of over 10,000 (otherwise it is described as "remote"). More details of the classification are given in the "Notes and Definitions" (section A.10). Almost a third of people living in the four city settlements were within 6 minutes walk of a bus service said to have a frequency of at least one bus every 13 minutes, as were about a sixth of people living in other urban areas. However, at most only a couple of percent of people in small towns and rural areas had such a service. In contrast, 11% of people in "accessible" rural areas, and 20% of those living in "remote" rural areas, were at least 14 minutes' walk away from a bus stop, and a further 11% of people in "remote" rural areas were said not to have a bus service. Chart B shows how bus service frequencies differ between the six types of area.
3.3.3 The final two rows of the table compare the availability of bus services for people in households with and without cars. The percentage who lived in a household for which the respondent did not know the frequency of the bus service was higher for those living in households which have cars, and the percentage who had a frequent bus service nearby was higher for those living in households without cars.
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