2 Background
2.1 This bulletin provides information from the National Travel Survey ( NTS) about travel within Great Britain ( GB) by Scottish residents. The NTS covers a sample of households across GB, and is conducted on behalf of the Department for Transport ( DfT). The results of the NTS for GB as a whole appear each year in DfT publications, some of which include a few figures for Scotland alongside statistics for other parts of GB. This bulletin concentrates upon the NTS statistics of travel by Scottish residents. We gratefully acknowledge the help of DfT Transport Statistics staff, who provided the statistics for this bulletin.
2.2 The NTS collects information about all kinds of personal travel for which the main reason for the trip is for the traveller to reach the destination. The survey therefore covers travel for private purposes, for work, and for education. Commuting is included. Trips in the course of work are also included if they fulfil the requirement that the main reason for the trip is for the traveller to reach the destination. However, travel in the course of work to convey passengers or to deliver goods is excluded ( e.g. travel at work by bus drivers, lorry drivers and postmen). Notes on the NTS's coverage and definitions appear in Section 4.3.
2.3 The NTS is not designed to produce annual figures for Scotland: between 1989 and 2001, each year's sample included only 300 or so Scottish households; from 2002, the sample has an average of about 750-800 Scottish households per year. Therefore the samples for a number of years had to be combined in order to produce Scottish results, and even they will be subject to sampling variability. This may lead to the NTS producing unreliable results for some relatively infrequent types of travel, because they are based upon a small number of trips in the sample, and so may be subject to large percentage sampling errors. For this reason, some tables show the numbers of people in the sample, and italics identify figures which are based upon fewer than 300 trips in the sample (and so could be affected by particularly high percentage sampling errors).
2.4 In 2006, the Department for Transport ( DfT) weighted retrospectively NTS results for 1995/1997 onwards. The use of the weights increased the overall number of trips and average distance travelled per person by 4-5 percent for GB as a whole. The tables in this edition have been revised to use the new results for 1995/1997 onwards. See section 4.2.7 for details.
2.5 The main change in this edition is the inclusion of seven new tables:
- Table 2 Full car driving licence holders, by age and sex
- Table 9 Long distance trips within GB, by main mode and length
- Table 19 Average distance per person per year, by main mode and ( GB) household income quintile
- Table 26 Average distance travelled per person per year, by main mode and access to household car
- Table 33 Frequency of walks of 20 minutes or more, by age and then by sex
- Table 34 Trips to and from school, by main mode
- Table 35 Trips by people aged 60+, by main mode, concessionary fare pass possession and sex
The order of the tables has been changed, and they are now identified by table numbers rather then by letters. Lists showing the relationship between the table numbers in this edition and the table letters in the previous edition appear on the page before the first table. In addition, 4 rows have been added to Table 1, which give the percentage of concessionary fare pass possession for certain age groups by sex.
2.6 "Travel by Scottish residents" is one of a series of Transport Statistics publications, most of which focus on particular aspects of transport and cover them in depth. The individual publications that comprise the series are described in the section on "Transport Statistics publications" towards the end of this edition. A comprehensive statistical picture of transport activity is described in the compendium "Scottish Transport Statistics" volume, the "Main Transport Trends" bulletin and the "Key Transport Statistics" card. These provide figures on a wide range of topics, including: vehicles licensed, traffic volumes and road accidents; the numbers of passengers on bus, rail, air and ferry services; travel to work, travel to school, household car availability and other key findings from the Scottish Household Survey and the National Travel Survey; and the tonnages carried by road, rail and waterborne freight.. "Travel by Scottish residents" provides many detailed analyses of the Scottish results of the GB National Travel Survey.