Accredited official statistics

Travel time measures for the Strategic Road Network and local ‘A’ roads: October 2020 to September 2021

Congestion on the Strategic Road Network (motorways and ‘A’ roads managed by Highways England), and on locally managed ‘A’ roads, year ending September 2021.

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Details

Due to changes in provider and methodology, new tables have been created for the Local ‘A’ Roads and Strategic Road Network. These new data tables are not comparable to historic data tables. Analysis that discusses the levels of change in each network are available in the methodology notes.

On the Strategic Road Network (SRN) for the year ending September 2021, the average delay is estimated to be 8.1 seconds per vehicle per mile compared to speed limits travel times, a 1.2% decrease compared to the year ending September 2020.

The average speed is estimated to be 59.3mph, 0.2% up on the year ending September 2020.

For local ‘A’ roads, there has been a step change in the statistics following the changes in suppliers of the Road Travel Time Data. Therefore, data cannot be compared historically.

On local ‘A’ roads in September 2021, average delay is estimated to be 51.7 seconds per vehicle per mile (spvpm) compared to free flow.

The average speed on local ‘A’ roads is estimated to be 23.3 mph for September 2021.

Please note that figures for the SRN and local ‘A’ roads are not directly comparable.

The outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a marked impact on everyday life, including on congestion on the road network. As these data are affected by the coronavirus pandemic in the UK, caution should be taken when interpreting these statistics and comparing them with previous time periods. The congestion metrics remain below the anticipated levels for September 2021.

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Updates to this page

Published 14 December 2021

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