Travel in London: how much, how often, by what mode, and by whom...

Probably almost everything you could ever want to know about travel in the capital is contained in Transport for London’s new 300-page tome. LTT delved into the data and picked out some of the trends

MODAL SHARE: Public transport up as car use declines

Public Transport's share of journeys in the capital has dramatically increased over the last 20 years at the expense of car travel.

The share of journey stages (the component parts of a trip) made by public transport grew from 30% in 1993 to 41% in 2009. At the same time, stages made by private transport (car or powered two wheelers) fell from 46% to just 37%.

The percentage of stages made on foot has remained almost stable – dropping from 22% to 21% – and bicycle stages doubled but only from 1% to 2%.

In the last decade, total passenger kilometres on public transport have almost doubled – from 9.9bn in 1991/92 to 17.4bn in 2009/10. Within this, bus passenger kilometres have doubled, from 4 bn in 1991/92 to 8 bn in 2009/10. Underground passenger kilometres rose from 5.9bn to 8.5bn.

The increase is partly a consequence of demographic change. Greater London’s population has climbed from 6.7 million in 1988 to 7.75 million today. The number of people commuting into Greater London has also grown, from 670,000 in 2003 to 810,000 in 2010.

But vehicle kilometres on the road network have not mirrored the rise in public transport use. Road traffic rose from 30.7bn vehicle km in 1993 to 32.7 in 1999. They then stabilised before falling back to 31.4bn in 2008 and 30.4bn in 2009.