4. How and why people travel(Tables 2 to 8, A, B and I; Chart B)
4.1 Introduction
4.1.1 In cases where the randomly-chosen adult says that he or she made any journeys or trips out of the house on the previous day, the interviewer asks for details of each journey. When a journey consists of a number of stages ( e.g. the person went by bus to a station, and then caught a train to, say, Manchester), the interviewer records details of each stage. The interviewer says that there is no need to mention any stages (or journeys) which were less than a quarter of a mile, or less than five minutes on foot, such as a short walk to a bus stop.
4.1.2 The information recorded about each journey includes:
- the day of week on which the journey was made (see section A4.2);
- the type of journey (see paragraph A4.3);
- the purpose of the journey (such as travel to or from work - see paragraph A3.3);
- the mode of transport used ( e.g. walking - see paragraph A3.4);
- the place where the journey started, and the place where it finished (see paragraph A5.1);
- the times that the journey started and finished (see paragraph A5.2).
For journeys made by car, the interviewer also asks:
- the number of occupants of the car;
- whether the journey was delayed by traffic congestion, and if so, for how long;
- whether the driver paid for parking at the end of the journey, and if so, how much was paid, and for how long was the vehicle parked.
For journeys made by bus or rail, the interviewer asks:
- whether the journey was delayed, and if so, for how long, and what the cause of the delay was.
4.1.3 In cases where a journey consists of a number of stages, the interviewer asks for information about the mode of transport, and about the start and end places and times of each of the stages (apart from any stages of less than a quarter of a mile or less than five minutes on foot). In such cases, the main mode of transport for the journey is defined, as in the GB National Travel Survey, as the mode of transport which was used for the longest (in distance) stage of the journey - see paragraph A3.5.
4.2 Day of week of travel
4.2.1 Table 2 shows the percentages of adults' journeys for Scotland for 2004 which were reported for each day of the week of travel, after the reweighting process (see section A4.2) has spread the number of interviews evenly over the days of the week. Table 2 illustrates that there is not much variation by day of week except that there are slightly fewer journeys on Sundays (11% of all journeys) compared with each of the other days of the week (14-16%). Similarly there seems to be little or no variation in day of travel with sex and age-group.
4.2.2 There is more variation with day of week for the main mode of travel. Only 6% of bus journeys and 8% of rail journeys are on a Sunday, reflecting the reduced services then, although the rail figures may not be precise, being based on a small sample of journeys. 35% of taxi/minicab journeys were made on Saturdays, although again these are based on a small sample of journeys. The percentages for bicycle are based on a total of only slightly over 200 bicycle journeys, so they may be unreliable.
4.2.3 The day of week of travel also varies with the purpose of the journey, with proportionally more shopping journeys on a Saturday (23% of all shopping journeys compared with 11-15% on each of the other days). There are higher percentages of journeys with the purpose of "visiting friends and relatives" at the weekends: 17% on Saturdays and 19% on Sundays compared with 12-15% on each of the other days of the week. Also, a much higher percentage of eating and drinking journeys are made on Saturdays (33%) than on any other day of the week. There was not much variation in the day of week of travel with the current situation of the interviewee.
4.2.4 There were apparent differences in the day of the week of travel with the type of area of residence. For example, apparently only 9% of journeys made by residents of "remote" small towns were made on a Wednesday, and 20% on a Thursday. These figures should be interpreted with caution, bearing in mind that interviewers' preferences in some "remote" areas may mean that the actual numbers of interviews conducted on certain days of the week are very small and the reweighting process may not have fully compensated for this. The reweighting process produces an even spread of interviews over the days of the week for Scotland as a whole, but not for different types of areas.
4.2.5 All the tables in this bulletin showing results for each of the individual local authority areas and Regional Transport Partnership areas refer to the two year period 2003/2004. This is because the SHS is only designed to be representative for all local authority areas for periods of two years - see Section B2.1. The results in Table 3 show that for some local authority areas the Travel Diary could be unrepresentative because the distribution of reported journeys may depend greatly upon interviewing patterns as well as journeys made (see section A4.2 for more details). The reweighting process produces an even spread of interviews over the days of the week for Scotland as a whole, but not for individual local authority areas (see Table 24 for details). Therefore, the figures for local authority areas, and, probably, some of the Regional Transport Partnership areas (particularly the small ones), in all tables in this bulletin should be used very cautiously.
4.2.6 Table 3 suggests that, in 2003/2004, there was some apparently large variation in the day of week of travel for people living in different RTP areas - for example, people living in South-West RTP area apparently made fewer journeys on a Friday than the other areas. It is not known whether these are genuine differences, or the result of sampling variability, or arise because the interviewer(s) in some areas conduct most of their interviews on certain days of the week.
4.2.7 Little change in the distribution of journeys by day of travel was shown between the five years, as shown in Table I.
4.3. Main mode of transport
4.3.1 Table 4 analyses the main mode of travel for the journeys that were recorded. In 2004, the main mode of travel for 53% of journeys was as a driver of a car or van, 16% of journeys were as a passenger in a car or van, 15% were made on foot, 10% were bus journeys, 2% were taxi/minicab journeys and 2% were made by rail. The main mode of travel differed between the sexes: 62% of journeys by men were as a driver of a car or van compared with 45% of journeys by women, and 21% of journeys by women were as a passenger in a car or van in contrast to 9% of journeys by men. There were slight differences between the sexes for journeys by bus (12% of journeys by women compared with 9% of journeys by men).
4.3.2 There were also big differences between age-groups in the mode of travel used. 19% of journeys for people aged 16-19 were on foot, as were 30% of journeys for those aged 80+. This compares with 13-17% for all other age-groups. The main mode of travel was as a driver of a car or van for 17% of journeys by adults in the 16-19 age-group and 25% of journeys by people aged 80+, compared with 58-63% of journeys by adults in the 30-59 age-groups. Bus was the main mode of travel for 6-8% of journeys by those aged 30-59 in contrast to 26% of journeys by those aged 16-19 and 19% by those aged 70 and over. Rail was the main mode of transport for 2-4% of journeys by those aged 16-49 compared with 1% or less of journeys by those aged 50 and above.
4.3.3 The main mode of travel varied with the purpose of the journey (Chart B). 60% of commuting journeys were as a driver of a car or van, as were 70% of escort journeys and 76% of business journeys, compared with only 33% of journeys by people going out to eat or drink and 35% of journeys to or from education. Only 5% of business journeys were on foot and 5% were by bus. There were higher percentages of journeys by foot and by bus when the journey purpose was education (27% and 24% respectively). 12% of journeys for the purpose of eating and drinking were by taxi or minicab compared with 5% or less for the other journey purposes. There was also some variation with the employment status of the adult. The main mode of travel was as a driver of a car or van for 72% of journeys by the self-employed and 64% of journeys by people in full-time employment compared with 27% of journeys made by adults in higher/further education. 34% of journeys by the unemployed were by foot in contrast to only 10% of journeys by the self-employed or those in full-time employment. For 24% of journeys by those in further or higher education, the main mode of transport used was bus compared with 8% of journeys by those in full-time or part-time employment and only 1% of journeys by those in self-employment.
4.3.4 The main mode of travel also varied markedly with income. For example, the percentage of journeys which were made as the driver of a car or van rose from 29% for those in households with an annual net income of up to £10,000 p.a. to 71% for adults in the "over £40,000" household income band. The percentage of journeys made by bus was 20% for those in the lowest income band to 2% in the highest.
4.3.5 There were also differences between the type of area in which the respondent lived. 20% of journeys made by residents of the most deprived 20% of areas of Scotland were on foot, compared to 11-13% in the least deprived 40% of areas; 33% were as the driver of a car, compared to 63%; 21% were by bus, compared to 6%; and 4% were by taxi or minicab, compared to 1%. 44% of journeys by adults who live in large urban areas were made as a driver of a car or van in comparison with 66-68% in rural areas.
4.3.6 36% of journeys made by adults in a household with no cars available were made on foot and 32% by bus, compared to 13% on foot and 7% by bus when one car was available, and 7% on foot and 3% by bus when more than one car was available. 71% of journeys made by adults with a full driving licence were made as the driver of a car.
4.3.7 Table 5 shows the differences between different local authorities and Regional Transport Partnership area. As mentioned in section 4.2.5 the results for some local authority and RTP areas may be affected by an uneven distribution of interviews by day of the week. If some days are under-represented, and other days are over-represented, this may affect the percentages for the main modes of travel for a particular local authority area.
4.3.8 Table A shows that the proportion of reported journeys made as the driver of a car has increased over the six year period, from 49.9% in 1999 to 52.7% in 2004. The proportion of journeys made on foot has decreased from 19.5% in 1999 to 15.3% in 2004. In both cases, there appears to be a long-term trend, but the year-to-year changes in the percentages sometimes fluctuate, presumably due to sampling variability. Over the same period, the proportion of journeys made as a passenger in a car or van has remained stable at around 16%, and the "bus" figure has been steady at about 10%, in both cases with some year-to-year fluctuations.
4.3.9 Table 6 shows figures for Scotland and each category of the urban/rural classification 1999 to 2004, and compares the figures for 2003/2004 with those for 1999-2002 for RTP areas. The figures do not suggest great changes over the six years, either overall, or in any of the types of area across Scotland, apart from those already mentioned.
4.4 Purpose of reported journeys
4.4.1 Table 7 details the purpose of journeys (see paragraph A3.3 for information on how journey purpose is defined). Overall, almost half of adults' journeys were for commuting (25%) or shopping (23%). There was some variation between the sexes: 26% of journeys by women were for the purpose of shopping compared with 19% of men's journeys. Commuting was the purpose of 27% of journeys reported by men, and 23% of women's journeys. There was more variation by age-group, as one would expect. Commuting accounted for 27-33% of journeys by the 20-59 age-groups compared with much smaller percentages for the 16-19 age group (21%) and the 60+ and over age-groups (1-8%). The percentage for which the journey purpose is education tends to decrease with age from 23% of journeys by 16-19 year olds to 0-1% of the 50 and over age-groups. The percentage of shopping journeys seems to increase with age, from 13% of journeys by 16-19 year olds to 38-46% of journeys in the 70 and over age groups.
4.4.2 Journey purpose varies with current situation (economic status), as one would expect. 42% of journeys made by adults in full-time employment were for commuting. Self-employed people made 16% of their journeys in the course of business. Similarly, further and higher education students had the highest percentage of journeys with the purpose of education (31%). In consequence, journey purpose also tends to vary with annual net household income. In particular, the purpose was commuting for 9% of journeys by adults in the "up to £10,000 p.a. household income" group, compared with 29-32% of journeys by those with an annual household income of over £20,000.
4.4.3 There was very little variation in journey purpose with the type of area in which the respondent lived, in terms of the level of deprivation. There was slightly more variation in terms of urban/rural classification. The biggest differences were for commuting (ranging from 19% of journeys by adults who lived in "remote small towns" to 26% of journeys in "other" urban and "accessible" rural areas) and shopping journeys (22% of journeys in "other" urban areas and "accessible" small towns, to 30% of journeys in "remote" small towns).
4.4.4 Table 8 shows council area and RTP area results for 2003/2004. As mentioned in section 4.2.5 the results for some local authority areas shown in the second part of Table 8 should be interpreted very cautiously, because the percentages of journeys shown for some purposes could be affected by the under-representation of some days of the week and the over-representation of others.
4.4.5 Table B shows that there is little variation in journey purpose over the six years (sampling variability will cause some year-to-year fluctuations). However, the proportion of journeys for the purpose of commuting has increased from 22.7% in 1999 to 24.5% in 2004.