I was a speaker at a meeting of the Transport Statistics Users Group, held at the Department for Transport on 21 October, when I outlined my analysis of National Travel Survey data which points to the conclusion that demand for personal daily travel has saturated.  Professor Peter Jones, my colleague at University College London, reported his findings that personal car use (vehicle kms) had stopped growing in recent years.  James Hooson (DfT) outlined the structure of the National Transport Model and its projections of future traffic levels.

There seemed to be some reluctance on the part of the Department’s modellers to give any weight to the evidence of cessation of growth of personal daily travel by all modes, and of car traffic in particular, that pre-dates the economic downturn, or to contemplate that the behavioural motivators of personal travel may be changing.  As a consequence, the Department’s projections of traffic growth and of transport sector carbon emissions may be too high.  Given the UK target to reduce overall carbon emissions by 90% by 2050, there must be a concern that sectors other than transport may be required to reduce carbon emissions more than necessary.

 My presentation can be found on this website at Documents, where you will also find the text of a paper covering much the same ground given at the Universities Transport Studies Group earlier this year.