The changing patterns of the nation’s commuters
A long-term study highlights our changing patterns of travelling for work, revealing that we are doing less of it. PAUL CLIFTON sifts through the evidence
WE are commuting less now than we did 25 years ago, even though there are more people working. A decline in the number of commuting trips per person has not been offset by a 12% increase in population in England over the same period.
This clearly has substantial implications for the way the railway operates - the times of services, the lengths of trains, and the amount of overcrowding. And, most obviously, the patterns of fares charged to people for travelling at different times of day or days of the week.
We are used to reporting in RAIL that “overcrowding is getting worse”. The comments in Open Access appear to confirm it. Trains into London, in particular, are struggling to cope. Billions of pounds of public money are being invested to squeeze extra capacity out of a congested network.
But the underlying national trend is in the opposite direction. In 1988, each worker made an average seven commuting trips a week. By 2014, that had fallen to 5.7 trips a week. The fall is substantial whichever way it is measured: per person, per employee, or in absolute numbers of people travelling.
The study was carried out for the Department for Transport by researchers at Imperial College London and NatCen Social Research. It found that more people are working partly from home. There has also been growth in the number of people who do not work from one fixed location - 9% in 1988, 16% by 2014. And there has been growth in what the report calls ‘trip chaining’, whereby people combine two or more trips for different purposes. That can include dropping children at school on the way to work.
Perhaps most significant is a large increase in part-time employment and self-employment, both of which are associated with making fewer journeys.
We are also starting work earlier, and finishing later. Trips to work now start several minutes earlier in the morning, with homebound journeys shifting to slightly later in the afternoon. As the working day has lengthened, and commuting has consolidated into a smaller number of journeys, we are travelling less often but over longer distances.
There are also fewer people classed as ‘manual’ workers now. Manual workers are less likely than others to commute during peak periods, and more likely to do shift work.
Traditional commuters are still responsible for more than half the income earned in England. They account for 57 pence of every £1 earned in England, although that is down from 69 pence in 1988.
Actually, the great majority of trips we make have nothing to do with commuting - they represent only 16% of personal journeys. But they place a disproportionate burden on the transport system because commuting is longerdistance than other types of travel, and because it is also concentrated at times when the network is busiest.
Rail also remains a niche market, with 56% of commuting journeys made by car as a driver and a further 10% made as a car passenger. About 10% of people walk to work, although that number has declined rapidly.
The proportions of commuting journeys by national rail and London Underground have both increased over the 25 years. Bus use has grown strongly in London, but declined almost everywhere else. Rail commuting is highest in London (18% of journeys). Walking is also highest in London, although car driving has fallen most steeply in the capital. No surprises there - London’s transport patterns are increasingly different from the rest of the country.
For rail planners, a sharp decrease in people travelling to work on five or more days a week has important implications. More people are commuting by train on each day that they work, but they do so on fewer days each week. More than one in three rail commuters now do this.
The study finds that a decrease in commuting is not just due to people working primarily from home, but to a mixture of working sometimes from home and sometimes from an alternative workplace.
The 25-year analysis reveals a significant shift in commuting by rail throughout the week.
More people travel to work by train, but they do so less often. Of those who take the train, in 1988 64% did so fewer than five days a week. Now 71% do so fewer than five days a week. Only a handful do so on six days or more.
As every commuter knows, fewer passengers travel on Mondays and Fridays than on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. That pattern has altered only slightly over the 25 years, although more people now work on Sundays.
The study looked at whether those who don’t take the train on some days choose a different mode. They don’t - instead, this reflects the trend for more people
to work on a decreasing number of days.
But because the working day is becoming longer, the trip from work to home is concentrated in a shorter peak period in the evening. That is strengthened by a change in the nature of part-time work - more people are working for a few days each week, rather than for a few hours across each day.
Professional and managerial work groups tend to travel in the morning and evening peaks. Those described as manual and personal service workers tend to travel at other times. As those groups of workers have declined in the total workforce, it has led to increasing concentration in the peaks.
Not surprisingly, how far you travel to work is a sign of your wealth. People with more money travel further and longer for work than poorer people. The top fifth of earners travel, on average, 15 miles to work; the bottom fifth travel five miles.
Workers over the age of 30 are primarily responsible for the overall trend of longer commutes. Men under 30 are the only group whose commuting distances have consistently decreased. This means that the geographical size of the labour markets that young men are accessing is decreasing. This is consistent with more part-time working, falling incomes, and decreasing numbers of people taking the driving test.
And those who travel furthest and longest are most likely to be in the London area - anyone familiar with London house prices will understand that. The biggest increase in distance is among parttime workers.
Overcrowding is greatest in London, with other cities barely featuring on the scale. The study found that 563,000 passengers arrive in London in the morning peak. The next busiest city for rail is Birmingham, with a mere 39,500 peak passengers, followed by Manchester (30,900).
Between 2007 and 2012 there was a sustained improvement in rail passengers’ rating of whether they had sufficient space to sit or stand. This is attributed to better rolling stock, but also to a dip in the number of people in work during the recession, and specifically on board peak services. Using National Passenger Survey data, commuters’ ratings of available space on trains was much lower in London than elsewhere.
The Department for Transport study found that all commuting costs have increased faster than general price inflation over the 25 years, with the exception of the cost of purchasing a car, which has dropped sharply.
Rail fares rose in real terms by 17% between 1991 and 2001, and by a further 15% in the following decade. Bus fares rose by a similar amount. The cost of fuel, tax, insurance and maintenance for cars rose by much more, but was offset by a whopping 63% fall in average car purchase costs. And the cost of motoring varies across demographic groups - young men have paid a lot more in insurance than other groups.
Looking to the future, rail commuters show a long-term trend of improved satisfaction, and three in five car commuters report no difficulties with their journeys.
This would appear to be in sharp contrast with the daily diet of news stories lamenting the trials and tribulations of the trudge to work. Actually, it appears to be getting easier, or at least easier to bear.
National rail commuters are more likely than commuters on other modes to report difficulties, although they are doing so less.
The overarching story, this report concludes, is one of increasing flexibility in both working practices and commuting practices.
In some ways, this has eased pressure on the most congested routes - fewer people are making the same journey at the same time every day. In other ways, it has exacerbated problems - as the working day has become longer, more people are heading home at the same time, condensing the evening peak.
It highlights a recurring theme reported by RAIL in recent years: the season ticketing system used by Londoners in particular is increasingly at odds with the lifestyle of the people who depend on it. Commuting Trends in England 1988-2015, by Scott Le Vine, John Polak and Alun Humphrey, is published by the Department for Transport in November 2017. Active modes represent the shortest journeys. The average walk to work is less than a mile, while cycling is around three miles. Local bus journeys (at five miles) are half that of car journeys. National Rail, at an average of 20 miles, is double that of car journeys.