AIn the last year, Milton Keynes City Council’s demand-responsive transport service MK Connect has replaced 56,000 journeys that would have otherwise been made using a car.

A recent survey of MK Connect passengers found that 13% of respondents were now using MK Connect instead of a private car. By making their journeys in a shared vehicle instead of a car – tens of thousands of kg of carbon emissions have been saved.

MK Connect is the city’s local transport service aimed at residents who aren’t served by an existing bus route and can’t get around by other means. Vehicles are shared by passengers heading the same way, with pickups typically within a couple of hundred metres of the passenger’s home. Around 435,000 journeys were made last year using MK Connect. It was introduced by the City Council in 2021 and is the biggest service of its kind in the UK. Prior to the introduction of MK Connect, disabled users and those that wanted to travel in the evenings and on Sundays had very limited transport options, but they can now rely on the service to get them around.

Cabinet Member for Climate Action and Sustainability, Cllr Jennifer Wilson-Marklew, said: “We’re proud that MK Connect is having such a positive impact for our residents who rely on the service. We’ve learnt lessons from when we first introduced MK Connect and we’re always listening to feedback and looking for ways to improve the service even further. It’s thanks to innovative transport methods like this that we can help people get around our city in a sustainable way and achieve our climate ambitions.”