British citizens continue to use the car more despite efforts to encourage more environmentally friendly travel.
Not only is their concern about the environment but also for the nation’s health.

More significant active travel is a must to improve all aspects of our lives.

Behind the wheel

The annual National Travel Survey (NTS) has shown that the average number of car journeys made by people living in England has increased by 6% in 2023.

This means that people made 915 trips on average in 2023, or 18 trips a week.

Despite the growth, ‘trip rates’ remained 4% lower than in pre-Covid pandemic in 2019.

People in England are walking record distances.

According to government data, the average walking journey increased in length last year, even as most other forms of day-to-day travel continued to lag behind pre-pandemic levels.

However, the figures show that the Covid-era cycling boom continues to fizzle away.

The private car remains by far the most popular means of transport, and it leads expert warnings of a “mobility divide” in society.

Mapping routes

The NTS is a household survey of personal travel by residents of England travelling within Great Britain.

Data is collected through interviews and seven-day travel diaries.

Studying the figures and patterns shows an increase in trip rates amongst private transport modes – including as car drivers, car passengers and motorcycles) and public transport modes in 2023.

Average trips increased for both car drivers and passengers to 363 trips per person and 185 trips per person, respectively.

However, these remained below pre-pandemic levels.

Regarding the most frequent mode to begin a trip, 39% of trips started with driving a car.

Interestingly, females made more car trips than males.

However, males made longer car journeys than females.

When it comes to public transport, journeys on buses are significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels.

Close to home

Despite a significant recovery from the collapse in travel during the height of Covid restrictions in 2020-21, the average distance travelled remained 8% below the level in 2019.

However, experts said campaigns to promote active travel and walking to school may have had some success, with 5% more trips now than in 2019.

While the average number of walking journeys fell marginally last year compared with 2022, the average distance travelled on foot was 225 miles per person.

This is the highest since the DfT survey began in 2002.

Virtually all walks were less than five miles, while 60% of multimodal journeys – those using more than one form of transport – started with a walk.

Almost 90% of secondary school children and 80% of primary pupils walked to school where the distance was less than a mile.

Overall, women walked further than men, and those in their thirties made the most journeys on foot, at 327 trips each over the year.

But despite the boom in bike sales during a the pandemic, people in England averaged just 47 miles by bike last year.

This was a 17% drop on 2022 and just over half the distance recorded in 2020, when Covid restrictions created a cycling boom.

Four wheels

RAC senior policy officer Rod Dennis says: “It’s abundantly clear that the private car remains the mode of choice for journeys over a mile in length, despite the fact that the proportion of households with access to a car has remained broadly flat for the last 50 years.

“And while the average distance travelled by bus has crept up slightly this year, it’s still the case that these figures are down hugely compared to the start of the century – reinforcing the fact that many local bus services, where they still exist, simply aren’t working for people.

“The findings give the new government some food for thought as it tries to balance the needs of all road users, whether they are bus riders, cyclists, pedestrians or drivers.

“In the case of the latter, it’s clear many people feel they have no viable alternatives to the car for the trips they need to make.”

Catherine Woodhead, the chief executive of the campaign group Living Streets, said: “It’s clear there’s work needed to help get more of us walking and wheeling. The government needs to invest in making streets both safer and more welcoming for everyone, and that includes an end to pavement parking.”

Healthy transport

With car trips up, the AA says it “underlined the importance of the car for personal mobility”.

The centre-left IPPR think tank said the survey revealed a massive social divide and that the trends were incompatible with the UK’s 2030 carbon reduction targets.

Ranked by income, people in the lowest 10% travelled on average 4,400 fewer miles – 170 fewer trips – than those in the highest 10%.

Stephen Frost, a principal research fellow at IPPR, said the government needed a long-term plan to tackle inequalities based on car dependency.

He says the transport system was “stacked against the poorest in society and many have limited, or no, access to healthy, sustainable and affordable ways to travel”.

Michael Solomon Williams, from the Campaign for Better Transport, said: “It’s great to see more people embracing walking as transport, but the plateau of cycling figures suggests more needs to be done to improve our cycle network … improving health and reducing the burden on NHS.”