Household travel | Ministry of Transport

The New Zealand Household Travel Survey is an ongoing survey of household travel conducted for the Ministry of Transport. From 2018 onwards, each year people in over 2,000 households throughout New Zealand are invited to participate in the survey, by recording all their travel over a 2-day period. Each person in the household was asked about their travel and other related information.

Note that this travel survey captures travel in the road/footpath environment (and domestic flights and ferries) — off-road activities such as mountain biking and hiking are not included in these estimates. The 2018 - 2021 data is from 13,218 people in 6,353 households, collected between July 2018 and June 2021. Professional driver trips (including cycling trips such as mail and pamphlet delivery) have been excluded from the analysis.

Please note that face to face surveying was interrupted by COVID 19 restrictions from March 2020 onwards. The 2019/20 survey year was cut short and ended in late March 2020, and the next survey year did not start until Aug 2020. Face to face surveying was only able to take place in locations at Alert levels 1 and 2, but not 3 and 4. Results will reflect the travel patterns observed when and where surveying could take place. More information about the history of the alert level changes can be found at https://covid19.govt.nz/about-our-covid-19-response/history-of-the-covid-19-alert-system/(external link)

More information about the Household Travel Survey can be found here

The latest available results from the survey are shown through various visualisations below, or through the other tabs above. Spreadsheet breakdowns for various results, including by mode for regions, gender, age and ethnicity can be found by clicking the green cross on the Notes section below, and following the links.

Please note that these are preliminary results from the New Zealand Household Travel Survey and may be subject to change (initial release 2018, updated 27 September 2021 for 2015-2018 data). These results from the new survey are not directly comparable to the results from the 2003-14 or earlier travel surveys. The detail and breadth of information available based on the new survey will improve as the sample size increases over the years. More analysis will be made available on these pages as they are completed.

This analysis focusses on those households where everyone in the household fully completed the travel diary and they are weighted to represent the New Zealand population.

Household travel: Regions travel by residents 2015 onwards

Household travel: Main urban areas travel by residents 2015 onwards

Household travel: Mode and purpose travel by residents 2015 onwards

Household travel: Age groups travel by residents 2015 onwards

Household travel: Gender travel by residents 2015 onwards

Household travel: Ethnicity travel by residents 2015 onwards