Travel in London Travel in London

3. Travel trends by mode
Figure 3.12
Trend in monthly cycle hires by type of hire.
1,400
1,200
Open to
casual users
December 2010
Eastern
extension
March 2012
Southwest
extension
December 2013
Number of hires (thousands)
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
Source: TfL Surface Transport, Outcomes, Insight and Analysis.
3.12 Modal trends: Walking
Some 6.4 million walk-all-the-way trips were made on an average day in London in
2014. This is an increase of 9.3 per cent since 2008, this increase mainly reflecting
population growth over the period (which was also 9.3 per cent). This gives a
walking mode share (for all travel) of 21 per cent, which is identical to the position
in 2008. However, there is evidence that increased public transport use has, as a
by-product, increased the number of walk journey stages undertaken by Londoners,
with associated health benefits. Section 11.8 of this report considers the
characteristics of walking in London, while section 9.7 looks at the contribution of
walking to active travel in London.
3.13 Modal trends: Road-based freight and servicing
Road is by far the dominant mode for goods transport in London in terms of the
weight of goods lifted. This section looks at trends in the volumes of road freight
vehicles, in terms of vans and heavy goods vehicles. It uses two main sources of
data – cordon crossing data from TfL’s surveys and area-based volumetric data
from DfT’s traffic counts.
Vans
Figure 3.13 shows the trend in light goods vehicle traffic (vehicle kilometres) in
central, inner, outer and greater London. Figure 3.14 is the equivalent trend in the
volume of light goods vehicles crossing the central, inner and boundary cordons,
corresponding to central London, inner London and the GLA boundary respectively.
Note that the counting cordons relate to a specific set of locations, which are
optimised to measure radial traffic movements. They therefore may not be
representative of overall traffic trends or levels.
65 Travel in London, Report 8