Journeys by active travel

Description of the measure(s)

This indicator measures the proportion of short journeys made by adults (16+) that are made by walking or cycling.

Performance is assessed based on two measures:

• The percentage of journeys less than 2 miles that are made by walking.
• The percentage of journeys less than 5 miles that are made by cycling.

Definitions

Journey distance is calculated using road network distance.

Source(s)

The data for this indicator are gathered through the  the Scottish Household Survey (SHS), which is a National Statistics product, produced by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Household Survey (SHS) is a major population survey conducted annually amongst a representative sample of people living in private residences. It is published in the Scottish Household Survey Annual Report, which can be found here. An interactive data explorer for the SHS can be found here.

Each year, as part of the SHS, around 10,000 adults complete a Travel Diary recording all the journeys they made the previous day, including details about the mode of travel used and information that can be used to calculate the distance of each journey.

Transport-specific results are published in Transport and Travel in Scotland publication.

Criteria for change (what change in the data constitutes a change in performance)

The performance arrow is assigned based on the performance of both the cycling and the walking measures.

• If both measures are increasing, then a performance improving arrow is assigned.
• If one measure is increasing whilst the other is maintaining, a performance improving arrow is assigned.
• If both measures are decreasing a performance worsening arrow is assigned
• If one measure is decreasing whilst the other is maintaining, a performance worsening arrow is assigned.
• If both measures are maintaining, a performance maintaining arrow is assigned
• If one measure is increasing whilst the other is decreasing then a performance maintaining arrow is assigned.

In order to determine whether the individual cycling and walking measures are increasing, decreasing, or maintaining, the symmetrical thresholds below are used. If the recent change in the figure is less than the value of this threshold, performance is considered to be ‘maintaining’.