The annual Travel to Work Survey explores the work-related travel habits of people in Leeds. We use it to spot trends, monitor changes and plan future transport investment.
Given the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the government guidance to work from home, the survey reveals current travel trends and future commuting intentions.
The return of the commute?
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way many people work, with 25% of participants continuing to work from home. While this is lower than in 2020 (35%) it is a significant increase on the historic trend (1.5%).
More than half of those surveyed expect to travel to the office 5 days a week in the future. The rest anticipate a hybrid working pattern, consisting of 4 days (14%), 3 days (16%), 2 days (12%) or 1 day (5%) in the workplace. No participants expect to work from home every day permanently.
During the summer Covid-19 restrictions were relaxed, and in September the furlough scheme ended. As a result, most businesses began to return to pre-pandemic norms.
This influenced the way participants travel to work, with 40% of commuters surveyed driving alone to work at the time of the survey in 2021, a small increase on 2020 proportions (36%) but still lower than pre-Covid-19 levels (43%).
Commuting trends
Cycling to the workplace has risen above pre-pandemic levels, with 4.1% of participants travelling by bike. This may reflect government advice to avoid public transport to stop the spread of Covid-19 and measures to support active travel modes. When those working from home are discounted, the results indicate that more than half (53%) of those travelling to the workplace are doing so in a single-occupancy car. Though this is a slight decrease compared to 2020, it is higher than pre-pandemic levels.
All other modes are lower than pre-pandemic modes, with bus and rail journeys for those currently travelling to work markedly down on pre-pandemic levels at 13% and 10% respectively, compared with 16% (bus) and 15% (train) in 2019.
Car ownership and fuels
Around 15% of responders indicated that they did not own a car, this is lower than the national average of 23%. Of car owners, only 154 participants (1.7%) owned fully electric cars. 78% of participants used petrol or diesel cars, while a further 2.6% owned a hybrid-petrol/diesel variant. As the market for electric/hybrid cars grows and the supporting infrastructure is built, the use of electric and hybrid vehicles is likely to increase.
Conclusion
The results of the Travel to Work Survey 2021 must be considered in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. There has been a huge shift towards working from home, though half of respondents plan to return to the workplace five days a week.
Throughout the pandemic, the government discouraged the use of public transport, and many of the factors that discourage car use, such as congestion and the difficulty and cost of parking, were no longer an issue. Going forward, the challenge will be to rebuild confidence in public transport and encourage those who currently drive to switch or return to sustainable modes
Our vision for Leeds is to be a city where you don’t need a car 
When you add up the percentages, they do not add up to 100%. Also, commuting trends show 13 and 10% for bus and rail travels respectively but the chat below says something different. If the percentages don’t add up to one hundred, then the data is incomplete. What makes up the gaps?
LikeLike
It’s a shame more people are not using the bus or the train, but many put this down to the lack of reliability that the service will run according to the timetable and this no doubt is reflected in the rise in the number of single occupancy cars. Furthermore, the lack of utilisation of the buses and trains, will lead to services being cut back and this ia already happening on the buses!
LikeLike
Was it based on this information that Leeds city council decided to broad scale remove parking permits from sites in Leeds city center south? making an already challenging commute by car an almost impossible nightmare to now find parking to go about our business and do our jobs?
We’ve also noticed plenty of extra traffic wardens around to punish people who through no fault of their own now have nowhere to park and are simply trying to get to work and do their jobs.
LikeLike