London commuting data shows limited impact of office mandates

New research on commuting patterns in London confirms the limited impact of ‘back to the office’ directives.

The Travel in London report produced by Transport for London revealed that Londoners were now making fewer than two trips out of their home each day – and spend as little as 54 minutes travelling on a daily basis.

The number of Londoners encouraged to work from home had doubled from 0.78 million pre-pandemic to 1.57 million in 2023/24 – just over a third of all workers living in the capital.

It said: “Some 47% of London resident workers can now work from home on either a permanent, regular or occasional basis compared with 30% in 2019/20.

“Although not all take advantage of this there is now little doubt that greater hybrid working has become more embedded since the pandemic.”

TfL’s London Travel Demand Survey suggested that the average number of trips undertaken per person on an average day across a seven-day week continued to edge slowly downwards to 1.98 trips in 2023/24 – bucking the trend of a 6% increase nationally.

The average distance travelled in 2023/24 was seven miles – down from just over eight in 2019/20.

The length of time that Londoners spent travelling fell from 56 minutes in 2022/23 to 54 minutes last year.

In 2005/6, when TfL first produced the Travel in London report, Londoners travelled for an average of 72 minutes per person per day.

The report also found that only 35% of London residents achieved Mayor Sadiq Khan’s active travel target of 20 minutes per day spent either walking or cycling – well below the pre-pandemic average of 42%.

However, in 2023, travel demand – across all modes in the capital – rose to 95% of the pre-pandemic baseline, up from 90% in 2022.

TfL said commuter journeys remained concentrated between Tuesdays and Thursdays, though to a lesser extent than in 2022/23.

There were 5% more journeys by bike in 2023, compared with 2022. The total – 1.33 million cycle trips a day – was up from about one million in 2019.

The rise of electric bike hire schemes, which are dockless, such as Lime and Forest, saw a 26% fall in the use of the Santander bikes, formerly “Boris bikes”.

The “modal share” – the crucial measure of how many journeys are walked, cycled or made by public transport rather than by private vehicle – rose one point to 63.2%.

However this was still below the pre-pandemic baseline of 63.6 per cent in 2019. Mayor Sadiq Khan’s target is for this to reach 80 per cent by 2041.

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