Words by Justin Ward

The Covid-19 pandemic, and its associated lockdowns, had a huge impact on travel patterns in the UK. The most common ways of travelling by public transport saw major reductions, with high proportions of people not using a bus (82%) or train (88%). Meanwhile, private modes of transport and active travel became the most common ways of getting around during lockdown; 63% drove a car during lockdown, 65% walked or wheeled all the way to a destination and 21% cycled.

In hindsight, we can see the extent to which the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 have changed all our daily lives. We shop differently, travel differently and work differently, with a revolution in working from home (53% of us during the pandemic) perhaps having one of the biggest impacts, with the knock-on effect on commuter transport. The popularity of hybrid working, post-pandemic, has also changed transport patterns: weekday bus use now peaks between Tuesday and Thursday, but on Saturday and Sunday it’s often higher than it was three years ago, reflecting a shift to increased use of public transport for weekend leisure travel.

And while public transport has seen falls in usage compared to four years ago, there’s also been a drop in levels of car ownership. This is thought to be driven by two-car families downsizing to one because of more flexible patterns of car use.

Understanding changing trends

What all this means for the UK government is that there’s a greater need to understand these changing trends. As a result, the Department for Transport has started collecting and publishing road traffic and other transport data differently. What was previously collated and published quarterly or annually began to be issued on a daily basis at the height of the pandemic. It is now published monthly, but with daily data.

This new modus operandi requires the DfT to have a more sophisticated response and understanding of users’ behaviours, expectations and influences. The department has a assembled a behavioural science team and a network of social researchers to support ministers and civil servants in developing policies and projects that understand and incorporate user perspectives. At the same time, work is ongoing on a programme to embed user-centric thinking and skills across the department. 

Focusing on users

An example of this is a new National Transport Attitudes Survey, first run in 2019, and the development of new personas, which break transport system users into nine segments. Each segment is illustrated by one or two typical users, and backed by evidence and data on their typical attitudes, locations and travel patterns. This process will continually improve, as this new approach has been embedded in all future relevant research and evidence gathering. This tool, launched earlier this year, is designed to challenge thinking and enable policy and project officials to reflect the diversity of user needs in their thinking and work. 

This new data-led, user-centric approach isn’t the only lesson to emerge from the pandemic – the proliferation of new roadspace schemes, such as low-traffic neighbourhoods, launched without first consulting residents, has been key lesson – but it has the potential to have a huge impact, building on the success of initiatives such as the Strategic Road User Survey launched in 2018.