Official Statistics

Walking and cycling statistics, England: Technical notes and definitions

Published 30 August 2023

Applies to England

This document provides details on the definitions and key data sources used to produce the latest Walking and Cycling statistical release.

Further information about these statistics is available, including:

• walking and cycling statistics: data tables
• walking and cycling statistics: statistics report
• walking and cycling statistics: background quality report

Definitions

NTS Definitions

Term	Definition
Cycling	All cycles, including e-cycles, which take place on the public highway (any public road, street, or path available to the public by a public right of way).
Walking	Walks over 50 yards on the public highway. Walk includes all travel on foot. It is also used when respondents ride in non-motorised wheelchairs, prams, or pushchairs, as well as when they ride on toy pedal cycles, roller-skates, skateboards, non-motorised scooters, or when they jog. For example, children who accompany their parents on a visit to the shops on toy pedal cycles (where the parents are walking) are coded as having walked there.
Disability	In line with the Equalities Act 2010, the definition of disability a person in both sources is considered to have a disability if they report any physical or mental health condition or illness that lasts or is expected to last 12 months or more, and which limits their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
Rural or Urban	Rural-Urban Classifications and an explanation of how they are defined is available from DEFRA.
Trip	A one-way course of travel with a single main purpose. A “cycling trip” is one where the greatest part was cycled.’ Note that outward and return trips are treated as two separate trips. Further, a trip can only have one purpose, and so a journey involving a mid-way change of purpose is split into two trips (except for minor secondary purposes, e.g. stopping to buy a newspaper).
Stage	Trips consist of one or more stages. A new stage is defined when there is a change in the mode of transport or when there is a change of vehicle requiring a separate ticket.
Main mode of travel	The main mode of a trip is that used for the longest stage of the trip by distance. With stages of equal length, the mode of the latest stage is used.
Distance travelled	This refers to the actual distance covered by a respondent rather than the distance ‘as the crow flies’.
Short walk	Walks longer than 50 yards (Around 46 metres or half a football field) but less than one mile. Short walks are recorded on the first day of the travel diary only (to reduce burden) and then multiplied by 7.
Leisure	Visit friends at home and elsewhere, entertainment, sport, holidays and day trips.
Towns and cities	Towns and cities have been defined using the Rural Urban classifications managed by Defra. Towns and cities include, urban conurbations, urban cities and towns and rural towns and fringe.

ALS Definitions

Term	Definition
Cycling	Cycle rides of any length for leisure, or for travel. Includes some recreational types of cycling such as mountain biking, track cycling, and cyclo-cross. Excludes exercise bikes and cycling indoors.
Walking	Any continuous walk of at least 10 minutes. Includes walking for leisure, for travel, rambling/Nordic walking. Excludes hiking, mountain/hill walking, and walking around shops, and for wheelchair users, wheelchair use.
Disability	In line with the Equalities Act 2010, the definition of disability a person in both sources is considered to have a disability if they report any physical or mental health condition or illness that lasts or is expected to last 12 months or more, and which limits their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
Area of residence	Activities are grouped according to where respondents live, rather than where the activity took place. Accordingly, activities should be interpreted with caution (especially in large urban areas where local authorities cover a relatively small area) as these places may be different.
Frequency of cycling and walking	The number of days in the past 4 weeks (28 days) that a person performed a walking or cycling activity. Interpreted as follows: At least once per month = at least 1 out of 28 days, at least once per week = at least 4 out of 28 days, at least 3 times per week = at least 12 out of 28 days, at least 5 times per week = at least 20 out of 28 days.
Leisure	Walking or cycling for the purpose of recreation, health, competition, or training.
Travel	Walking or cycling to get to place-to-place, for example, commuting, visiting a friend, or going to the supermarket.
Time usually spent walking and cycling	Time “usually” spent walking or cycling is the total time someone most frequently walks or cycles each day rather than the average time they spent walking or cycling across days.

Data Sources

Further information about the differences between each of the data sources and what they can be used for, can be found in our annual walking and cycling statistical release.

National Travel Survey (NTS)

The NTS is a household survey designed to provide a rich source of data on personal travel. It is part of a continuous survey that began in July 1988, following ad hoc surveys since the mid-1960s. The survey is primarily designed to track the long-term development of trends; therefore, care should be taken when drawing conclusions from short-term changes.

Data collection

In years prior to 2020, NTS data has been collected via two main methods. Firstly, face-to-face interviews are carried out with all members of the household to collect personal and household characteristics, along with information on all of the vehicles to which they have access. Each household member is then asked to record details of all their trips over a seven-day period in a travel diary, allowing travel patterns to be linked with individual characteristics.

Since March 2020, NTS data collection has been affected by varying restrictions associated with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Following a pause in fieldwork in March and April 2020, the NTS relied upon data collection via ‘push-to-telephone’ with interviews being conducted over the telephone and interviewers completing the travel diary on behalf of respondents. The lower response rate associated with this methodology ultimately impacted the statistical and analytical power of the data for the 2020 survey.

During 2021, data collection was switched to mixed-mode, combining ‘push-to-telephone’ with ‘knock-to-nudge’. This approach improved both the response rate and the impact of non-response bias in 2021, compared to 2020, however, the response rate remained below pre-pandemic levels. More details on the changes made to fieldwork operations in 2020 and 2021, and their impact on the data, can be found in the NTS Technical Report.

For 2022, a mixed mode approach was used, with knock to nudge and push to telephone being used until April 2023. After April, the survey returned to F2F with a phone back-up (PB) for interviewers to make use of in selected households where COVID-19 was a concern.

Sample size

In 2022, 3,646 households in England participated fully in the survey by providing information via interview and completing a 7-day travel diary. An additional 723 households participated in the interviews but did not all complete a diary. Although these cases cannot be used for trip-level analysis, their data is included in all analyses at household, individual, and vehicle levels.

Due to changes in the methodology of data collection, changes in travel behaviour and a reduction of data collected during 2020, 2021 and 2022, as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, care should be taken when interpreting this data and comparing to other years, due to the small sample sizes. For further details, please see the NTS background documentation.

Diary sample

Analysis of travel data for walking and cycling is primarily based on the travel diary sample. This comprises all ‘fully cooperating households’, defined as households for which the following information is available:

• a household interview (or telephone interview)
• an individual interview for each household member
• a seven-day travel diary for each individual
• where applicable, at least one completed vehicle section

Weights were produced to adjust for non-response and for drop off in recording observed during the seven-day travel week.

Active Lives Survey

The Active Lives Survey (ALS) is an annual household push-to-web survey administered by Sport England, an agency of the Department of Digital, Culture Media and Sport (DCMS). The first ALS was conducted between November 2015 and November 2016, and data is published biannually. The survey follows the Active People Survey (APS), which has been discontinued.

Data collection

The ALS is a mixed-mode (push-to-web) survey involving online (desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone) and paper methods for those households that either do not have internet access or prefer to complete the survey this way. Data collection is carried out by Ipsos MORI.

The survey:

• includes people aged 16 and over (14- and 15-year-olds do sometimes take part but are excluded from the analysis)
• runs from mid-November to mid-November
• interviews in each local authority are spread over the 12-month period to avoid seasonal bias

A letter is sent to a household – selected from the Royal Mail’s Postal Address File inviting up to two people per household to take part in the survey.

The overall sample size is around 175,000 people for each survey. For the majority of the local authorities, the target number of completed questionnaires is 500 returns, though some key areas will involve surveying a bigger number of people. For the two smallest local authorities (the City of London and the Isles of Scilly) the target was reduced to 250.

More detailed information about the data collection methodology can be found in the ALS methodology note.

Data weighting

Weighting is required to reduce the bias in survey estimates. Data have been weighted to Office for National Statistics (ONS) population measures for geography and key demographics. The sample sizes quoted in table CW0306 are weighted sample sizes.

Data considerations

National Travel Survey

Cycling estimates

Due to the low prevalence of cycling, the number of people in the NTS sample that cycle is small. The figures provided on cycling should be interpreted with caution, especially when examining trends.

Walking estimates

Historically, in the NTS, short walks (walks of more than 50 yards and less than 1 mile) were only recorded on the seventh day of the travel diary and weighted to account for underreporting. Since 2017, a methodological improvement was made to record short walks on day one of the diary for the whole sample. Figures for 2002 to 2015 have also been re-weighted based on the new methodology.

More information on the weighting of short walks is available in the NTS Technical Report.

Active Lives Survey

The Isles of Scilly and the City of London

The target sample sizes for the Isles and Scilly and the City of London are around 250. These are smaller than for other areas and therefore results for these areas may not be statistically robust. The unusually small populations of the Isles of Scilly and the City of London also mean that they are not directly comparable with other authorities. Therefore, caution is needed when interpreting the results for these two areas.

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Contact details

Walking and cycling statistics

Email [email protected]

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