Road Traffic Falling

An article in today’s Times highlights that road traffic has fallen for the first time in 30 years after rising fuel prices and recession has prompted millions of drivers to leave their cars at home.

The 34 million vehicles on Britain’s roads travelled 3.1 billion fewer miles last year. This is the equivalent of 125,000 round the world trips or three times the distance between the earth and the sun! The average motorist drove 90 miles fewer last year than they did in 2007 costing the government £165m in reduced income from fuel duty.

This drop in road usage contributed to the record fall in road deaths last year. The number killed last year fell by the same amount has it has in the whole of the last five years.

Falling new car sales in the last quarter of 2008 are also likely to have contributed to the fall in road traffic. The slump continued last month with a 30.9% drop in sales, the lowest January figure since 1974. The prediction is that the market for new cars will decline by 19.3% this year to 1.72million, 410,000 fewer than 2008 and 685,000 fewer than in 2007. All segments of the car market showed a fall in January, except the mini segment which was up 40.8%.

Ford announced that it was cutting 850 jobs in the UK (for BBC news clip of this click here), including 400 to 500 at its Transit van plant in Southampton. Vans though were the only type of vehicle to record a rise in traffic last year. This growth was fuelled by the growth in internet deliveries.

The fall in road traffic was steepest between July and September, when petrol prices peaked at £1.20 a litre. The reduction in road traffic continued in the last months of 2008 even though fuel had dropped below £1 a litre due to the ever increasing unemployment.

The Campaign for Better Transport said the government should take note- the historic link between traffic levels and economic growth had been broken and the end of the recession would not necessarily result in a return to the relentless rise in traffic. Growth is going to be much less dependent on car and air travel as people find alternative ways to do business.

The RAC argue otherwise saying this reduction is just a blip and that traffic levels would eventually return to the trend since 1950 of 4% annual growth.

For full article hit here.