Journey Times Statistics User Consultation

The Department for Transport is seeking views on the future of the Journey Times statistics series. 
      
Since 2014, the Department for Transport's evidence base for understanding transport connectivity and access to key services has been derived from the Journey Times statistical series. Although innovative when they were first employed, the methodology and technologies used in the production of these statistics involves very lengthy processing times and a large amount of dedicated resource to generate. Over time this has meant the statistics developed an increasingly large lag between the period they related to and their publication. Restrictions on access to relevant IT during the Covid-19 pandemic further disrupted production of the statistics beyond this. 
      
Recognising these limitations of these statistics and methodology, the Department has been working to produce an alternative evidence base and has since developed the ‘Model of Connectivity’. The model has been designed to be used for both monitoring and appraisal purposes to understand the impact of policy interventions. It aims to calculate a connectivity score for all of the geographic areas covered by the Journey Time statistical series, based on the purpose of travel (for business, including employment, visiting friends in their homes, education, shopping, leisure, and recreation), time of day of travel and mode of travel (walking, cycling, driving and public transport). The connectivity score is expected to range from 0 to 100 where 100 represents the most connected area. Within the model, ‘Connectivity’ is defined as ‘someone’s ability to get to where they want to go’. 
      
The Department will utilise outputs from the Model of Connectivity, such as the overall connectivity metric and journey time metrics, to monitor progress against the “Grow and Level Up the Economy” strategic aims going forward, a role that was previously fulfilled by the Journey Time statistics series. 
      
The new Model of Connectivity will be made publicly available as soon as is practicable. It is planned to be updated annually, with a shorter time lag than the Journey Times statistical series. Outputs are expected to be published in a CSV format, with granularity to a minimum of Output Area (OA) level. Further details on the methodology employed will be made available as soon as possible.  
 
Both the historic Journey Times Statistics series and the new Model of Connectivity have a similar objective – to provide data giving an indication of ease of access to critical services. Under our obligations arising from the Code of Practice for Statistics, we are expected to keep up to date with developments that can improve statistics, and when introducing new methods, we are asked to consider the added value of potential improvements and consider their likely impact, including in relation to comparability and coherence. We are also asked to be transparent about longer-term development plans. With this in mind, the Department is actively considering the impact that two concurrent series could have, particularly if competing narratives on transport connectivity emerge. In particular the Department wishes to establish whether there is a suitable business case for continuing to publish the Journey Time statistical series and plans to discontinue it if such a business case cannot be established. 

We are inviting your views on this subject and ask that you give us you feedback on this, via this short survey. Any questions relating to the above should be directed to: subnational.stats@dft.gov.uk

Thank you for your contributions