Scottish Household Survey: Travel Diary 2011

6. When are people travelling?

• Across the week the most common time for travel was between 7am and 9:30 am
• The overwhelming majority of travel was undertaken during daytime hours, with 81 per cent of journeys beginning between 7am and 6:30pm
• Travel was more likely on weekdays than on Saturday or Sunday

Time of Travel

6.1 Across the whole week the busiest time for travel was between 7am and 9:30am, with 18% of journeys starting within that period. [Table 7]

6.2 However, previous analysis has suggested that it may be more useful to consider weekdays and weekend days separately. The 2009/10 Travel Diary publication found that the percentage of journeys during the week peaked during the morning and evening rush hours. However, journeys at the weekend demonstrated a peak around midday to 1pm^[4].

6.3 Saturday and Sunday accounted for the lowest proportion of all journeys made. [Figure 4] [Table 8]

6.4 Day of Travel analysis should be taken with an element of caution. The weighting process which ensures a weighted number of interviews spread across the week may not ensure that the weighted number of journeys are evenly spread across the week. More information is provided in the Appendix.

Figure 4: Journeys by day of travel, 2011