Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Road Journeys in England

The outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted many aspects of our lives. In a bid to control and contain the virus in England, the UK government implemented its first and strictest COVID-19 measures on 23rd March 2020. This, and subsequent restrictions, limited the movement of people to varying degrees.

As part of Department for Transport's ongoing consideration of the impact of these restrictions on road traffic, we have analysed additional data sources such as Origin-Destination (OD) data from Teletrac Navman. This data gives insight into the travel patterns of roughly 300,000 vehicles which include cars, vans and heavy goods vehicles (HGVs).

Analyses presented here covers data from 27th April to 31st December 2020. The maps included are interactive and readers are welcome to zoom and pan to desired areas and click for more details.

During the "Stay Home" period in late March and April 2020, only essential workers were allowed to go to their place of work, and travel outside of the home was severely limited. Subsequently, delay on both Local 'A' roads and the Strategic Road Network (SRN) is substantially lower in April 2020 than the estimated delay without the impact of COVID-19.

Even though these restrictions started to ease in early May 2020, the effect was delayed and brief:

• On both the SRN and the Local 'A' roads, the effect of the easing on speed and delay does not become evident until June 2020.
• On the SRN, the speed remains higher than estimated and delay is almost a third lower than estimated even in December 2020.
• On the Local 'A' roads, both speed and delay return to pre-pandemic levels in August and September 2020 but are affected again in November and December, likely due to subsequent lockdowns and restrictions.

The slides below compare the observed, or published, speed and delay against the estimated speed and delay without coronavirus.

In addition to considering the impact of travel restrictions on average speed and delay, we can also consider changes in the number of trips in each day through various stages of COVID-19 restrictions (Figure 1).

In late April and early May 2020, during the "Stay Home" period, the number of trips during weekdays is almost half of the average number of trips on weekdays in 2019. As the restrictions eased in the "Stay Alert" period in May and June 2020, the number of daily trips increases, particularly on weekdays. In these months, daily exercise is no longer limited to 1 hour and some non-essential workers were allowed to return to their place of work.

As more restrictions eased in July and August 2020, the number of trips increased further, though not as rapidly as in the "Stay Alert" period. During these months, non-essential retail, pubs and restaurants were opened in stages. As a result, more movement was possible and more people were encouraged to return to their place of work.

A small step change can be seen in September 2020 as schools reopened for all year groups for the first time since March 2020. In the couple of months that followed, when the "Rule of Six" and the "Three Tier system" were in operation, the number of daily trips returns close to 2019 levels. There is a small dip in late October 2020, most likely associated to half term for schools and students.

A subsequent lockdown in November 2020 saw a small reduction in the number of trips immediately after it was introduced. However, not only was the drop not as drastic as in the previous lockdown, it was also not sustained throughout the lockdown.

Even there were fewer trips in 2020 than in 2019, the number of daily trips made by each vehicle changed only by a small amount. On average, the trips made in a car dropped from 5 per day in 2019 to 4 per day during the "Stay Home" period. The difference in the other phases of Coronavirus measures was even smaller, particularly after retail reopened in June 2020. The pattern is the same for vans as well. This means that overall fewer people drove but if they did drive, the number of trips they made in a day remained roughly similar to pre-pandemic levels.

We can also look at how the number of trips in a week changed in each local authority in England. The maps in Figure 2 compare one week during the "Stay Home" period (27th April - 3rd May) to one week in 2019.

During the stay home period, the median number of trips is just over 8,000, whereas the median in 2019 was over 18,000 trips per week. In fact, the number of trips during the "Stay Home" period was between 50% and 70% lower than in 2019 for the vast majority of local authorities.

While the number of trips and vehicles changed drastically, particularly during the "Stay Home" period, the proportions remained roughly similar (Figure 3) between the two lockdowns and 2019. Roughly two thirds of trips are less than 5 miles in all three periods considered. The difference in the proportion of trips is less than 2% points for all distances over 5 miles.

The slideshow below contains interactive maps of the average distance travelled by each vehicle in each local authority for every phase of COVID-19 restrictions. In general, the longer the phase, the longer the average distance travelled. This may be because the introduction of new measures serve as reminder to practice caution and results in better adherence which relaxes over time.

While it was a very different year in many ways, for congestion, the changes seen in delay and speed over the course of 2020 may be associated to changes in the number and frequency of trips during the various stages of lockdown.

Delay on the SRN from March 2020 remained lower than the estimated delay without impact from COVID-19. Whereas on the Local 'A' roads, delay was close to pre-pandemic levels in August and September 2020.

However, the overall pattern did not change. The number of daily trips made by each vehicle is still similar to pre-pandemic levels. The vast majority of trips are short (less than 5 miles) with changes in proportion of longer trips remaining similar to pre-pandemic levels and across the different phases of restrictions.

• The increase in the number of trips (Figure 1) was larger on weekdays, whereas the number of trips during weekends has remained roughly constant since June 2020. While this is representative of road usage in general, the differential increase may also be in the sample compared to the general driving population.
• Also notable is that the number of vehicles in the 2020 dataset is lower than it was in 2019. This may explain why the number of trips in August to October 2020 is not as high as in 2019.
• Figure 1 includes trips that were made to and from Wales and Scotland however these may not be representative of patterns outside England as different COVID-19 measures were introduced and the sample is not intended to inform for regions outside of England.
• The 2019 average includes data from the 27th July 2019 onwards only due to a sample change that came into effect.

This analysis was published as part of the Road Congestion Statistics  annual publication .