I mentioned in the previous chapter the national travel surveys that provide detailed information on how, why and where we travel. They also show trends over time, which both allow us to see how our travel patterns have changed and help assess possible future developments.

The British NTS, first administered over half a century ago, offers a 45-year time series of fairly continuous data. Figure 2.1 shows outcomes per person for annual distance travelled, time spent on the move and number of journeys made, by all modes of travel (except international air travel). This very largely reflects our pattern of daily travel – the journeys to work, school, shops, to visit friends and family, for leisure activities and so forth. What is evident is that two aspects of individual travel have changed relatively little over 45 years: average travel time has remained close to 360 hours a year, or an hour a day, and the average number of trips has been about 1,000 a year. There has been some small decline in annual trips in recent years – by 9 per cent between 2002 and 2017, almost all of which is due to a reduction in walking trips of less than one mile, mainly for shopping, personal business and visiting friends.

In contrast, the average distance travelled has changed substantially over this near half a century, from 4,500 miles per person per year in the early 1970s to reach 7,000 miles by the mid-1990s, since when growth has ceased; indeed, there has been some reduction. Travelling further over the same amount of time has been possible by increased speed of travel, the result of investment in the transport system: mainly private investment in more and better cars and public investment in more capacity on the road network. However, as we transitioned to the twenty-first century, growth ceased in the average distance travelled. In Britain, about three-quarters of the total distance travelled by road and rail is by car, so it is no surprise that the average distance travelled by car has also stopped growing.

Data from the 2017 US National Travel Survey also shows that average miles travelled per person grew from 1969 to the mid-1990s, but then growth ceased.