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Introduction

The Census of Population 2001 measured the distance travelled to work as a straight line from each person's usual residence to his or her workplace. There are a small proportion of people who live away from home during the week or, in the case of the armed forces, for example, live temporarily away from home for longer periods. As the census did not capture information at a person's temporary address, anomalies can appear in the data. For example, people may walk to work, yet their usual residence is many kilometres from their workplace. Furthermore, some employees listed their employer's head office address as their workplace rather than the address at which they actually worked.

For people in work, the daily commute is probably the most regular trip they make. Most trips to work are made by car or van and have a major impact on the volume of traffic on the roads. For this reason, distance travelled to work is one of the UK government's sustainable development indicators. In general it would appear that most people are prepared to travel further for work trips than they generally would for other journey trips such as shopping or most leisure activities. A multitude of factors are liable to influence the propensity to travel to work and the distance travelled. These are likely to include such obvious factors as car ownership and the availability and proximity of motorways and railway and other public transport infrastructure and the location of employment areas relative to residential areas. Less directly are other influences such as the form and the structure of the settlement pattern and urban form, the local industrial and occupational structure and its changes over time as well as more personal considerations such as the trade-off in time and distance between job location and desired place of residence and the impact of multi-job households.

Details of distance travelled to work in Lancashire and its constituent areas are shown in Figure 1 and Table 1 below. In general, work trips across Lancashire are somewhat shorter than those in England and Wales as a whole. Out of the total "workplace population" in the Lancashire sub-region of 596,200, 48.5% travel less than 5km between their usual place of residence and their place of work, compared with a smaller proportion of 40.2% in England and Wales. Conversely, whilst nationally 12.7% travel more than 20km, only 9% do so in Lancashire. Just 1.3% (though still representing 8,000 people) in Lancashire and 2.7% in England and Wales travel more than 60km to get to work though in many areas, notably in the south east of England, over 5% of workers travelled more than this distance.

Some 13% of the people working in Lancashire described themselves as working at or from home. These will likely include many people working on their own account such as farmers and others who are self-employed but will also include some employees. Many of these are also likely to have daily worktrips as they go about their regular activities but such trips are not recorded.

Variations in work distances travelled within Lancashire are not in the main large. Blackpool and Burnley are notable for the high proportion of work trips (58%) of less than 5km, presumably reflecting in part the fairly compact physical nature of the towns themselves and the adjacent areas from where a large proportion of the commuters derive. Indeed, all but two of the Lancashire districts have well-above average proportions of people travelling less than 5km. The exceptions are Fylde and Ribble Valley, arguably Lancashire's two most prosperous districts, where the proportions travelling less than 5km fall to 35% and 34% respectively. Both districts have a long history as commuter "dormitories" but also, as well as having (in Ribble Valley's case especially) a high proportion of people working at or from home, also have industrial structures that are dominated by large international companies with large plants in semi-rural locations that attract their workforce from a large labour catchment area. Whilst not standing out as a source of the longer distance commuting trips, Preston, as the administrative and commercial centre of Lancashire and by far the largest single workcentre attracting commuters from all parts of Lancashire and beyond, has above average numbers of work trips in the 20-60km range.

Sex and Distance Travelled to Work in Lancashire

Men were found to be twice as likely to travel over 40 km to work than women: 3.9% of men compared to 1.7% of women. Conversely, 30.8% of women worked less than 2 km from home, compared to 18.6% of men (Table 2).

Household Expenditure on Transport as a Proportion of Total Household Expenditure: EU Comparison, 2000: Social Trends

When household expenditure patterns across the EU are put on a comparable basis, UK households spend a broadly similar proportion of their overall expenditure on transport to the average; 15% compared with the average of 14% in 2000. The country that spent the highest proportion of household expenditure on transport was Portugal, at 17%, while the country that spent the least was Greece, at 9%. There are considerable variations between countries with regard to how household expenditure on transport is apportioned. In 2000, 35% of household expenditure on transport in the United Kingdom went on the purchase of personal transport equipment, close to the EU average of 34%. However, only 39% of UK household expenditure went towards the operation of that equipment - such as buying fuel and spare parts, and paying for maintenance - compared with a EU average of 49%. Conversely, 26% of UK expenditure was on purchased transport, such as rail and bus fares, compared with an average of 17%.

Household Expenditure on Transport: in Real Terms: Social Trends

After taking into account the effect of inflation, household expenditure on transport and travel increased by 22% between 1990 and 2002/03. If expenditure in 2002/03 is compared with 1991, the increase is larger (30%) because expenditure on transport and travel fell in real terms between 1990 and 1991 due to the recession at that time. The average amount households spent on transport and travel continued to grow between 2001/02 and 2002/03, at 1%. This contrasts with a 1% fall in overall household expenditure over the same period.

However, the increase in household expenditure on transport and travel over the 1990s was smaller than over the previous decade. For example, household expenditure on motoring rose by 36% between 1980 and 1990, and by 26% between 1990 and 2002/03. Expenditure on motor vehicle insurance and taxation grew the most over the later period, by 69%, increasing by 16% between 2001/02 and 2002/03 alone.

For further details, or if you have any ideas for improving the content of this article, please contact:
Bryan Moulding
Tel 01772 534172
Email Bryan.Moulding@lancashire.gov.uk