Road Traffic and Congestion in Great Britain: Quarter 2 2008

This statistical bulletin includes statistics on Road Traffic and Congestion in Great Britain Q2 2008 according to arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. This bulletin includes first release of the following National Statistics: 

• Provisional estimates for road traffic in Great Britain for the second quarter of 2008
• Provisional estimates for inter-urban congestion in England for the year ending June 2008

Road traffic

Figures for 2008 are provisional. Final 2008 figures will be published in July 2009 and are liable to differ slightly from the provisional figures

The provisional figures show a decrease of 0.5 per cent in overall estimated traffic levels between the second quarters of 2007 and 2008.

The bulletin includes breakdowns by vehicle type and road class. Key results include:

• Car traffic decreased by 2 per cent
• Light van traffic increased by 4 per cent
• Heavy goods vehicle traffic increased by 1 per cent
• Traffic on motorways was unchanged  
• Traffic on both rural 'A' roads and urban 'A' roads decreased by 2 per cent
• Traffic on rural minor roads increased by 3 per cent 
• Traffic on urban minor roads was unchanged 

Inter urban congestion

This quarterly bulletin also includes National Statistics on congestion on motorways and trunk roads in England used to monitor the PSA measure on inter-urban congestion. Between the CSR07 baseline year ending March 2008 and the year ending June 2008, provisional figures show that:

• Average vehicle delay on the slowest 10 per cent of journeys fell from 3.95 to 3.86 minutes per 10 miles.

Notes

Road traffic 

1. The quarterly estimates are based mainly on data from 190 Automatic Traffic Counter (ATC). Caution should be taken in drawing conclusions about longer term trends from the estimates for a single quarter or year.

2. The final annual road traffic estimates are calculated from data collected by both the ATCs and 10,000 12-hour manual counts, combined with road lengths. Final annual traffic estimates for 2007 were published in the Statistical Bulletin Road Statistics 2007: Traffic, Speeds and Congestion, in July 2008. This bulletin can be found at http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/roadstraffic/speedscongestion/roadstatstsc/roadstats07tsc 

3. The next quarterly bulletin will be published on 6 November 2008.

4. The figures on traffic levels are measured in terms of vehicle kilometres and are sometimes known as the volume of traffic. This is not the same as congestion. For example, traffic levels could increase without increasing congestion if traffic is more evenly spread during the day, with less during peak periods and more at other times.

Inter urban congestion

5. The indicator used to monitor inter-urban congestion is the average delay in minutes per 10 miles (derived from the differences between observed journey times and a reference journey time) experienced on the worst 10 per cent of journeys for each monitored route. Currently, because of data quality issues, 91 of the 103 routes are used to monitor network performance. More information can be found at: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/
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6. This indicator is one of four used to measure success against the Department's current Public Service Agreement (PSA) to deliver reliable and efficient transport networks that support economic growth. The indicator will be monitored from the baseline year ending March 2008 up to the year ending March 2011. Reliability performance will be assessed in the context of an expected increase in traffic of 1-2% per year. There is no specific numerical target. 

7. The data for June 2008 are provisional because there has not been full quality assurance at a route level, but it is unlikely that they will be revised. Provisional data for July and August 2008 will be published on 4 September and 2 October 2008 respectively.

Urban congestion 

8. The May 2008 edition of the bulletin contained statistics for monitoring the PSA target on urban congestion data in major urban areas in England. The next urban congestion data will be published in the November 2008 bulletin. 

Publication details

Published on 7 August 2008 by Transport Statistics.

The next bulletin in this series will be published on Thursday 6 November 2008

Email: roadtraff.stats@dft.gsi.gov.uk for queries concerning this publication.

For information about release of this product see National Statistics Online.