National Travel Survey

The National Travel Survey (NTS) is the primary source of data on personal travel patterns in Great Britain. The NTS is an established household survey which has been running continuously since 1988. It is designed to monitor long-term trends in personal travel and to inform the development of policy.

The survey collects information on how, why, when and where people travel as well as factors which affect personal travel such as car availability, driving licence holding and access to key services.

Since 2002, the Department for Transport (DfT) has commissioned the National Centre for Social Research to conduct the survey fieldwork. Data collection consists of a face-to-face interview and a one week self-completed written travel diary. Approximately 20,000 individuals, in 8,000 households, participate in the NTS each year.

The 2011 NTS results will be published later than usual this year. The date has been provisionally announced as November 2012.

Browse statistical releases within this series

Browse individual statistical tables within this series

Index sheet of all the NTS statistical tables (XLS – 102 KB)

National Statistics

Statistics from the National Travel Survey were assessed during 2010 by the UK Statistics Authority. An assessment report was published in October 2010. The statistics were confirmed as National Statistics in July 2011.

Pre-release access lists

The post holders given pre-release access for up to 24 hours prior to release.

Factsheets

The following factsheets, based on NTS data, have been published since 2010:

Technical information

NTS technical reports for earlier years are available on request from the contact points below.

Future developments

The DfT ran a public consultation, on the future design of the National Travel Survey from June to September 2011. The consultation sought users views on the design of the NTS from 2013 onwards. The consultation document put forward a number of proposals to develop the NTS while reducing data collection costs, and is available for download at the link below:

A report containing a summary of responses to the consultation and details of the decisions the Department have made regarding the design of the survey from 2013 was published on 19 January 2012 and is available for download at the link below:

Also published on 19 January 2012 were three reports on the fieldwork, data processing and summary analysis of the 2011 NTS GPS pilot. These are available here:

Reports from a feasilbility study into the use of GPS in the NTS are available here:

These build on an earlier report into the potential use of new technologies in the NTS, which is available here.

A number of other NTS research and methodology reports have been published previously, with further information and copies of older publications available from the contact points below.

External websites

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