Travel in London Travel in London

11. Spotlight: How has travel by Londoners changed – insights from 10 years of the London Travel
Demand Survey (LTDS)
• This gives a trip-based mode share for walk (considering all travel) of 24.2 per
cent, which is 0.3 percentage points higher than in 2008.
• Walking accounts for 30 per cent of all trips made by Londoners – higher than
that for all people travelling in London. People tend to walk short trips: twothirds
of journeys of one mile or under are made on foot.
• People need to walk to access public transport, where walking forms one part of
a multi-stage trip. In fact, there are more than three times as many walk stages
than walk trips made every day.
• It is estimated that around 20 million walk stages are made every day in London
by London residents alone, and including the additional trips made by nonresidents
in London, it is estimated that around 29 million walk stages were
made every day in London in 2015. Note that these estimates differ from those
given in chapter 2 of this report, as individual walk stages are not included in
those estimates.
Walking and key demographics
Women residents tend to make more walk trips than men – an average of 0.83 walk
trips per person per day as compared to 0.68 for men. Looking at the average
distance walked however, figure 11.26 shows remarkably similar distributions for
both genders.
The mean walk trip length for both is around 650 metres, and there is no evidence
that men or women disproportionately make particularly short or long trips –
perhaps surprising given the larger total number of walk trips made by women.
Figure 11.26
16%
14%
12%
Distance walked by gender – London residents.
Male
Female
Percentage of trips
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Walk trip distance (kilometres)
Source: TfL Planning, Strategic Analysis.
1. Walk trip distances are calculated as the crow flies.
Travel in London, Report 8 235