Road traffic flows

Introduction 

This short article details figures from the Department for Transport that show road traffic flows by millions of vehicle kilometres. The results are based on a census of all major roads, and estimates for minor roads. They form part of a selection of road traffic statistics published on the Department for Transport website.

Please also see the traffic flow web pages that have statistics for the Lancashire-12 area, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool and the North West Region. The figures are in vehicle miles for various classes of motor vehicles and pedal cycles, and therefore represent a different form of measure to the flows results in table 1. The web links also include access to the detailed yearly data for hundreds of traffic count points in the Lancashire-14 area. We have now provided a Microsoft Power BI report that visualises the average daily traffic flow for the Lancashire-12 area, this is at the end of the article.

The national, regional and local context     

Table 1 has estimated traffic flows for England, the North West, and the Lancashire area from 1993 to 2022. After a period of constant growth, when vehicle kilometres in England increased by 21.8% between 1993 and 2007, an economic slowdown impacted on the results. From a previous high of 432,935 million kilometres in 2007, there was a pattern of marginal decline in England in 2008 and 2010, and then little change to 2013. The outturns from 2014 to 2019 however showed steady increases to reach a new record of 465,862 million kilometres in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic, with its strict travel restrictions, saw a fall to figures last seen in the late 1990s for all areas. The figures for 2010 to 2018 were revised up substantially for all areas in 2021, then down again for years 2000 to 2020 this time. The scale of the latest revision is such that the figure for the Lancashire-14 area has been reduced by more than 1 billion vehicle kilometres for the year 2020 and the previous two years.

The Lancashire-14 area in 2019 saw its traffic flow figure rise sharply to 13,088 million kilometres, the highest ever recorded, but it fell back to 10,319 million kilometres (-21.2%) in 2020 as a result of Covid-19 lockdowns. The recovery to 11,710 in 2021 was a 13.5% increase and continued into 2022, but flows have still not returned to pre-Covid-19 years.

Table 1. Estimated traffic flows for all motor vehicles, 1993 to 2022 (millions of vehicle kilometres)

Source Department for Transport: Road Traffic Statistics for Local Authorities Table TRA8904. 

Impact on traffic flows of the Covid-19 pandemic

Table 2 shows the huge negative change in traffic flow (millions of kilometres) between 2019 and 2020, which can only be due to the imposition of major restrictions on travel as part of the measures taken to prevent the spread of the virus causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

Table 2. Kilometre and percentage change in traffic flows, 2019 to 2020

Change: 2019-2020	Lancashire-12	Blackburn with Darwen	Blackpool	Lancashire-14	North West	England
Km (millions)	-2,516	-165	-88	-2,769	-12,003	-98,687
%	-21.3%	-22.4%	-16.4%	-21.2%	-20.4%	-21.2%

Source Department for Transport: Road Traffic Statistics for Local Authorities Table TRA8904. 

The Microsoft Power BI report below shows average annual daily flow for traffic count points in the Lancashire-12 area. This is the count of vehicles rather than vehicle kilometres. The definition is 'Number of vehicles that travel past the count point (in both directions) on an average day of the year'. The data is drawn from an API and we have included some 'smart narrative' in experimental form. We have provided additional functionality by breaking down the statistics by district. The figures shown are for the latest year, which is now 2022.

Source: Department for Transport

Page updated October 2023