Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has urged North East workers to cycle or walk to work.
He was responding to Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery, who told him that people in the region depended on public transport to get to their place of work.
It comes after the Government said it was "encouraging" everyone who cannot work from home to get back into the habit of going to work - but to avoid using public transport.
Mr Lavery: "There's many of people in our communities, that walking or cycling to work is virtually impossible [for].
"Lots of my constituents are entirely reliant on the already very poor public transport to access their employment."
He said some employers might allow staff to change their working hours, so that they did not all have to travel in peak periods, but others would not.
Mr Shapps told him: "44% of all journeys outside of London are less than three miles.
"So actually there's a lot of people in a lot of circumstances who might be able to switch to walking or cycling.
"Or as I mentioned previously, we now intend to introduce fast track trials of e-scooters."
He said if more people cycled it would also mean trains were less crowded for those who continue to use them.
Mr Lavery also paid tribute to transport workers who have died as a result of Covid-19, calling them "the real key workers". He said: "Workers across this country need our protection."
