Household travel Te karore ā-whānau

Reasons for travel also affect people’s decisions on how to travel. Travel to work, shopping/personal business and especially employer’s business are the reasons for more than half the time spent driving.

The time spent travelling and the reasons for travelling vary with age.

• Education and accompanying others are major components of travel for under 15 year olds, but matter little to those aged over 65 years.
• Travel to work is an important reason for travel for 15–64 year olds, but not for children and those over 75 years old.
• Those aged 25–54 years spend similar amounts of time travelling to work as they do for shopping/personal business, though the amount of time each age group spends on each varies.
• In general, the amount of shopping and personal business increases with age, reaching a maximum for 55–74 year olds.
• For those aged 65–74 years old, this is more than 45% of their travel.

Travel peaks between 3pm and 5pm on weekdays, with getting home being the main purpose of travel during those times. On weekends travel is more equally spread throughout the day.

Over three-quarters of journeys to work are driving or driving and walking. This was slightly lower (67%) in the late 1990s and 1980s, but by the late 1990s was up to 75%.

Wellingtonians drive less often to work: only 60% of work journeys are as drivers and 14% use public transport. Cantabrians are most likely to cycle (7%).

Where people live has a definite effect on their journey to work and the ways they can travel.

Looking at people’s journey to work in various main urban areas, we see that people in the Wellington area are least likely to drive to work (61% of their journeys to work involve driving) and are most likely to use public transport (train or bus, 18% of their journeys to work).

Of the active modes, those in Wellington and Dunedin have the highest walking rates (9%  of journeys), while those in Christchurch have the highest cycling rates (7% of work journeys).

For the latest data, 55% of journeys by children of primary school age were as car passengers. Walking (once the most popular mode) has declined from 43% to 29%, cycling from 12% to 2%, and public transport use is remained largely unchanged 1989/90 through to 2010/14.

Mode share of journey to school for primary school students varies by region.

For those of secondary school age, cycling has declined from 19% to 3% of journeys to school. Use of public transport has declined moderately from 9% to 7%, walking up slightly from 26% to 28%, and being driven to school has risen most from 20% to 30%. Now 5% of secondary school children drive themselves to school.

Mode share of journey to school for secondary students varies by region.

Caution should be read into some small numbers for the regions. For example, fewer than 100 full-time secondary school students were sampled in Northland.