Nearly one in three voters in Wales are deterred from using public transport by slow buses, according to a survey commissioned by the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) Cymru.
Ahead of the Welsh Senedd elections on 7 May, the poll of 1,000 people in Wales found that 32% would use public transport more often if buses were faster.
CPT Cymru’s manifesto, published in November 2025, highlighted road congestion as among the biggest issues for the industry in Wales and called for a 10% increase in average bus speed by the end of the next Senedd term.
The polling conducted by Findoutnow reported that younger people were particularly in agreement with CPT over this. Of those aged under 30, 51% said they would use buses more if services were quicker.
Bus lanes, bus priority and better coordination of roadworks have been stressed by CPT as measures to address the problem.
The survey also found that Conservative voters were the most likely to use buses, with 22% of those who chose the party in the last election using them multiple times per month.
For Plaid Cymru voters, this figure was 21%, while 17% of Labour supporters are regular bus users.
Reform voters were the least frequent bus users with 62% saying they never used the mode of transport and only 15% classing themselves regular travellers.
Graham Vidler, Chief Executive of the Confederation of Passenger Transport, says: “There’s a great deal of pent-up demand in Wales for public transport. Large parts of the country have good bus services, but too often they’re hampered by slow speeds.
“People are ready and willing to catch the bus and would do so in larger numbers if we could simply speed up journeys by giving public transport more priority on the roads.
“This isn’t rocket science – if the next Welsh government were to back more bus lanes, priority at traffic lights and better co-ordination of roadworks, we could get millions more journeys onto buses. That would cut the number of cars on the road and generate fare revenue to invest in more frequent services.”
The survey also found that, among other measures which would encourage people to use the bus more often are cheaper bus fares (cited by 38% of people), more frequent services (43%), a wider range of routes locally (47%), and greater reliability (39%).
Outlining CPT Cymru’s main asks of government for the industry, its manifesto focused on a five-year funding settlement, subsidy for targeted low fares, and better pick-up and drop-off facilities for coaches.
