Our Changing Travel Post-Pandemic
The DfT has published a study of post-pandemic transport trends and changing travel behaviour, Our Changing Travel 2023.
The data were gathered by Ipsos in an online survey of 3,732 people in England, and the study looks at changes between November 2022 and November 2023.
Change for Environmental Reasons
Willingness to change travel patterns for environmental reasons – for example, to walk more, drive less, use public transport more, and reduce flying – had dropped between November 2022 and November 2023.
Some of the changes include:
- willingness to walk or cycle more dropped from 19% to 16%
- willingness to use a car less dropped from 13% to 10%
- willingness to fly less dropped from 14% to 10%
Willingness to change transport behaviours was lower than willingness to change lifestyles in general.
Change in Travel Behaviour
There was little change in travel behaviour from 2022 to 2023. The most common modes in 2023 were:
- walking 77%
- car as a driver 75%
- car as a passenger 67%
- bus 49%
- train 41%
- taxis 28%
- underground 27%
- Uber 26%
- cycling 20%
- informal car-sharing 17%
This relates to trips in the 4 weeks before being surveyed and includes any modes used by respondents in that time, which is why the percentages don’t add up to 100.
A table shows that cycling was down 6 percentage points since 2022.
The most common reasons for journeys in 2023 were:
- food shopping 77%
- visiting friends or relatives 59%
- non-grocery shopping 46%
- travelling to work 43%
- pubs and restaurants 39%
- medical and dental appointments 34%
- recreation 32%
- services 31%
- day trip 30%
Trips for the top four reasons had increased by 3 to 4 percentage points since 2022.
What is Influencing Transport Choices?
Cost of living pressures influenced 65% of respondents. 56% said they were walking more, and 32% driving less, in order to save money.
There was little change in cost of living pressures.
People on lower incomes were changing whether and how they travelled.
Leisure journeys were reduced, but by 40% of respondents in 2023 as opposed to 46% in 2022.
27% of 2023 respondents said they cycled to save money.
The digital economy is reducing demand for travel. 92% of respondents had banked online in the previous 4 weeks, and 88% had shopped online.
36% of employees travelled to their place of work 5 days a week, up from 32% in 2022, but down from 47% pre-pandemic.
Public Transport
Respondents said that financial incentives and improvements to reliability and frequency of services would be most likely to make them use public transport more.