High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Friday, September 23, 2011
How People Travel
On average, Scots travelled 7,056 miles per person per year within Great Britain in the two-year period 2007/2008, according to the National Travel Survey ( NTS). The car was used as the main mode for three-quarters of the distance travelled: 5,247 miles, of which 3,397 miles was covered as a driver and 1,850 miles as a passenger. (If more than one mode of transport is used during a journey, the "main mode" is that used for the longest stage).
There has been a large rise in the distance travelled, with most of the increase being due to travel by car. In 1985/1986, Scots travelled, on average, only 4,652 miles per person per year, of which only 3,227 miles was by car as the main mode. So, over about 20 years, the average distance travelled per person per year increased by 2,404 miles, of which 2,020 were by car.
Other NTS results for 2007/2008 include average distances travelled per Scottish resident per year of 478 miles by local bus as the main mode for the journey, 541 miles by surface rail, 171 miles by foot, 52 miles by taxi and 30 miles by bicycle.
The NTS covers travel within Great Britain for personal purposes. It excludes travel in the course of work to convey passengers or to deliver goods. Results are given for periods of two or three years because of the small sample size, and, even then, the figures for some modes may fluctuate due to sampling variability. As usual when reporting NTS results, figures for "car" include the relatively small amount of personal travel by van or by lorry. In September 2006, the Department for Transport revised the previously-published results for 1995/97 onwards, generally by between 2 per cent and 4 per cent, following the introduction of weighting of the NTS results.
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Source: Scottish Transport Statistics
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