National Travel Survey 2009/2010: Scotland Results

This Bulletin presents information collected by the National Travel Survey about travel by individuals in private households across Scotland. The Department for Transport publication 'National Travel Survey 2010' (http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/series/national-travel-survey/) provides Great Britain figures and some analysis by country and English Region. For this publication, two years data is combined to achieve larger sample sizes allowing more detailed analysis for Scotland to be carried out. 2009/2010 therefore refers to two years of data combined and not financial year.

As the National Travel Survey will cease to collect data for Scotland from 2013, this publication also provides comparisons of the Scotland results against Great Britain figures and also comparisons with the Scottish Household Survey data and Travel Diary to highlight similarities and differences between the data sources.

Main Findings

Trips and Distance

Scottish residents made fewer trips than in the previous years, 957 per person in 2009/2010 compared to 978 in 2008/2009. [Table 1]
Scottish residents spent an average of 358 hours (almost 15 days) travelling per year. [Table 1]
Scottish residents travelled an estimated 7,010 miles per person per year (or 19 miles per day) within Great Britain in the two-year period 2009-2010, a slight decrease on the 2008/2009 figure but similar to 2006/2007. [Table 1 and 3]

Mode of travel

Cars accounted for almost three quarters of the total distance travelled per person per year (5,049 miles, 72%). [Table 1]
Public Transport accounted for 1,240 miles (18%) of the average distance travelled per person per year, of which 485 miles (7%) was by local bus and 364 miles (5%) by rail. [Table 3]
Walking accounted for 179 miles in 2009/2010 (3%). [Table 3]
Cycling accounted for 35 miles in 2009/2010, an increase from 25 miles in 2006/2007 though sample sizes are small. [Table 3]
Seventy-nine per cent of journeys under one mile were made on foot (151 out of 191 trips), 18 per cent were made by car, van or lorry. [Table 7]

Purpose of travel

Shopping was the most frequent purpose for travel, however more time was spent travelling for commuting and for business purposes.
In 2009/2010, shopping accounted for 21 per cent of the average 957 trips per person per year. Commuting accounted for 17 per cent of trips and visiting friends accounted for 15 per cent. [Table 12]
Commuting or travelling for business took up 3.7 days on average, per year, compared to 2.5 days on average spent travelling for shopping. [Table 15]

Demographics - Gender

Women made more trips per year than men on average (997 vs 955) but men travelled further (8,524 miles compared to 6,770 miles) (2006/2010). [Table 28 and 29]

Frequency of Walking

Forty per cent of adults said they walked for at least 20 minutes (without stopping) at least three times per week, with another 22 per cent doing so at least once or twice a week. [Table 33]
Three quarters of children said they walked for at least 20 minutes at least once a week. [Table 33]