The number of people commuting to work by public transport is in decline as buses and trains fail to keep pace with changing working habits.

Figures from Centre for Cities, the urban think tank, show a drop in the proportion of commuters using buses and trains in more than half of areas as jobs increasingly move to out-of-town business parks.

The number of commuters using public transport declined in 34 towns or cities and rose in 29. The biggest falls were in Glasgow, Dundee, Sheffield, Aberdeen, Ipswich and Sunderland, which were down by between 2 per cent and 3.3 per cent.

An analysis of the data by the CityMetric website showed that almost all the areas that showed rises were in the southeast. Paul Swinney, from Centre for Cities, said: “More companies are in business parks out of the centre and it is difficult to serve many of these areas with public transport,” he said.

In London 44.63 per cent of workers commuted by public transport in 2011, up from 38.5 per cent a decade earlier