Commuters favour car for work

THE latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that almost 70% of commuters in County Louth travel to work by car.

In April last year, 32,993 working commuters in County Louth (68.6%) travelled to work by car, compared to 65.6% of commuters nationally.

The figures show that just 6.3% of people in Louth commuting to work used public transport, compared to 9.3% of working commuters nationally. In Louth, a further 2.2% cycled, while 10.3% of those who commute to work walked there.

Commuting times rose in every county and the national average commuting time in April 2016 was 28.2 minutes, up from 26.6 minutes in 2011.

Commuters in Louth had an average travel time of 27.7 minutes, compared to 26.3 minutes in 2011.

Almost one in three Louth commuters (29.9%) were travelling for less than 15 minutes, compared to 32.3% in Census 2011.

Nationally, 22.9% of commuters had a commute of under 15 minutes.

In April 2016, 13.7% of commuters in the county spent an hour or more travelling compared to 12.3% in 2011, while 4.6% had a commute of over 90 minutes, as against 4.1% five years previously.

Of those who travel too and from work every day, 28,431 of them work within the county while another 7,020 travel into the county for work every day.

A further 11,852 people commuted to work outside the county, giving a net loss of 4,832 in the working population. A large majority of these travel to Dublin each day, either by bus or train.

Among primary school children, 57.4% travelled to school by car, while 26.8% (4,352) walked. The percentage travelling by bus fell to 9.5% from 11.4% in 2011, while 1.1% of students cycled to school.

The number of secondary school children walking to school increased by 270 to 2,278, accounting for 22.2% of secondary students, while 40.8% went to school by car, compared to 40.9% in 2011. One in three (32.2%) travelled by bus, while 0.9% cycled to school.