9. Delays to bus and rail journeys(Tables 17 and 18)
9.1 Table 17 provides estimates of delays to bus and rail journeys, for the period April 2003 (when the information was first collected) to December 2004. For each bus or rail journey made, the interviewer asked "was this part of your trip delayed?" and, for those who said that it was, the interviewer asked "why was your journey delayed?" and "how much time do you think was lost because of this?" Approximately 8% of bus journeys and 10% of rail journeys between April 2003 and December 2004 were said to be delayed. 4% of bus or rail journeys were delayed by about 5 or 10 minutes, and 4% for about 15 minutes or longer. Some of the figures in Tables 17 and 18 are based on only a small number of journeys, so are subject to large sampling errors.
9.2 13% of bus or rail journeys which started between 7:00 and 9:30 a.m. on a weekday suffered delays, as did 14% of such journeys started between 4:30 and 6:29 p.m. A slightly higher proportion of journeys appeared to suffer delays on Fridays and Sundays, but these figures are based on small samples, so could be subject to large errors.
9.3 Table 18 shows that 49% of delays to bus journeys were said to be caused by congestion on the roads, 30% by the bus arriving late and 6% by the bus not turning up. No other named reason accounted for more than 5% of delays.