Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 20 March 2019.
Can I thank the Member for her question? I should just say that the mobile phone data is just one source of information that we’ve used to inform our transport modelling work, and not just transport modelling work with regard to road investments and rail, but also with regard to bus services. Other data that we use comes from roadside interviews and, as I said earlier, from public transport passenger surveys and, indeed, from bus and rail ticket data.
We're using it to assess the extendability of the metro and to ensure that investment in extended services is invested in the right place for passengers who could and would use metro services as an alternative to the private car. But we're also using that data to plan future bus services and to ensure that current bus services are meeting the needs of existing passengers.
I should just say, though, in Newport—I know that neither of the local Members are here themselves, but they have relayed to me on numerous occasions the fact that just urging people to move from cars to buses in Newport will not alleviate congestion on the M4, because largely the congestion caused within Newport is not because people are using their private car as an alternative to the bus, it's because they simply can't rely on bus services in many situations, because there's too much congestion within Newport, and indeed there's a belief that people who are currently using the M4 are coming off from the south or the north side of Newport and then using the M4 to get to the other side. That's not the case either, and that's shown by some of the modelling and the data that we've been able to extract.