Personal travel bulletin for Wales

The Welsh Government has released their statistical bulletin on personal travel. This information was previously released in Chapter 6 of ‘Welsh Transport Statistics 2010’, which includes data from the National Travel Survey (NTS), the Labour Force Survey and the Annual Population Survey.

This report discusses travel behaviours across Wales and it raises a number of points which relate to physical activity, specifically the prevalence of walking and cycling.

Key Points

Approximately two thirds of all trips are made in either a car or a van, with walking trips making up 22% of all trips. While the average number of trips across all modes decreased between 2002/03 and 2008/09 from 996 to 971, the number of walking trips increased from 204 to 218 trips per year.

Walking trips averaged 0.8 miles in length. In comparison to the 2002/03 data, this represents an increase in distance covered by walking from 154 to 178 miles per year.

Around 10% of people walk and 1% cycle to work. A higher proportion of women than men reported walking to work while a higher proportion of men reported cycling.

The average time taken to travel to work in Wales is 21 minutes. This ranges from an average of 12 minutes for people whose main mode of travelling to work is by walking up to 50 minutes for those who travel to work by train. Those who chose to cycle to work averaged a 22 minute commute.

According to the NTS, walking is the most widely used method of travel to school by children aged 5-16 years and have an average length of 3.3 miles.

In 2010, the median average gross weekly pay of full time employees that travelled to work by:

• car was £460 a week
• bicycle was £490
• bus was £330
• walking was £320.

For more information download the Personal Travel in Wales – 2011 Bulletin