Road Traffic in Great Britain

9 August 2007

The Department for Transport has published National Statistics on Traffic in Great Britain , including analyses by vehicle type and road class, for the second quarter of 2007.

These provisional figures indicate that estimated traffic levels rose by 1.0 per cent between Q2 2006 and Q2 2007. Other key results, comparing the provisional Q2 2007 estimates with the final estimates for the same quarter one year earlier (Q2 2006) include:

• Car traffic decreased by 1 per cent
• Light van traffic increased by 9 per cent
• Goods vehicle traffic increased by 1 per cent
• Traffic on motorways, Urban A roads and Minor Rural roads was virtually unchanged
• Traffic on both Rural A roads and Minor Urban roads increased by 2 per cent

Based on the 2006 final annual estimates, cars account for 79 per cent of all motor vehicle traffic, light vans (13 per cent), goods vehicles (6 per cent), and other vehicles (2 per cent).

This quarterly bulletin also includes, for the first time, experimental statistics on the PSA target used to monitor congestion on motorways and trunk roads in England :

* Average vehicle delay on the slowest 10% of journeys rose from 3.78 to 4.10 minutes per 10 miles between the baseline year (August 2004-July 2005) and the latest year (June 2006-May 2007). Over the same period, average journey time on these journeys rose from 13.4 to 13.7 minutes per 10 miles.

Statistics Bulletin Traffic in Great Britain - 2nd Quarter 2007 is available here.