Population, land use and travel - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 33

300

Average Weekday
Saturday
Sunday

250

200

150

100

50

0

Figure 2.3 Trips in progress by hour of day (source: National Travel Survey 2006 Chart 6.2)

is thought to contribute disproportionately to traffic congestion in the morning peak
hour. In fact 12% of traffic in urban areas at this time during term is accounted for by
trips to school and 18% at the peak school travel time of 8.50am. (The proportions
will of course be much higher in the vicinity of schools themselves.) The significance
of the journey to school is compounded by the fact that so much adult activity has
to be organised in time and place around it. (One in five 'school-run' trips in the
morning are followed directly by a trip to work.) However the difference in traffic
conditions which people notice in the school holidays is only partly due to the absence
of escort education journeys (Bradshaw et al. 2000). It is also due to adults having
more flexibility in the timing and routeing of their own journeys, including the greater
probability of taking leave from work altogether.
The 'peakiness' of school travel is also more conspicuous today due to changes in
commuting behaviour arising from the nature and organisation of work. A generation
ago many more people were employed on similar fixed shifts or working days with
the result that traffic conditions were more marked by weekday peaks and lower
volumes at weekends. A combination of factors have altered this - the shift to service
industries, the extension of shopping hours over more of the day and week, the growth
in part-time employment, the introduction of flexi-time in offices and the increase in
working at or from home.
Although much social and leisure activity is not formally organised in the same way,
there are distinctive temporal patterns nevertheless which have important transport
repercussions. For example the growth in students and other young adults travelling
home or visiting friends at weekends creates exceptional peaks of overcrowding for
train operators where these coincide with daily commuting flows. Likewise some of the
worst traffic conditions on the nation's inter-urban roads are experienced in the run-
up to public holidays as people make a mass exodus from cities, and on early Sunday
evenings as people return from combinations of shopping excursions, days out in the
country, afternoon sporting events, weekends away visiting friends and relations etc.
The individual purposes by which trips are coded in the NTS can be grouped into
six main categories (Table 2.2). Shopping and personal business (including escort trips
other than escort education) are the two largest categories. (Personal business includes
trips to doctors, banks, hairdressers etc. plus eating and drinking except where the
purpose was social or entertainment.) Visiting friends and entertainment/leisure trips
together comprise almost a third of all trips. Over the last ten years the personal