Discussion of some of the more eye-catching figures in Transport Statistics Great Britain 2011
Release of Transport Statistics Great Britain 2011.
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Release of Transport Statistics Great Britain 2011
Discussion of some of the more eye-catching figures in Transport Statistics Great Britain 2011
Transcript
Presenter 1
This short video is to let you know that a brand new Transport Statistics Great Britain, the Department for Transport’s main statistical compendium, has been published on-line for all to see. And it’s jam packed with fascinating facts, fearless figures and staggering statistical trends. So what would you like know about Britain’s transport?
Presenter 2
Um, OK, I’d like to know which handled more passengers last year - was it Heathrow airport or Waterloo station?
Presenter 1
You could say that’s a bit of a no brainer because we know that Heathrow is the fourth largest airport in the world in terms of terminal passengers and has more international passengers than any other airport worldwide.
Presenter 2
So it must be Heathrow right?
Presenter 1
Er:no, last year Waterloo station handled more passengers than Heathrow.
Presenter 2
Actually, I’ve heard that the number of flight arrivals and departures at UK airports has increased ten-fold since 1950, but the number of passengers has increased nearly a hundred-fold. How so?
Presenter 1
That’s easy, aircraft got a lot bigger.
Presenter 2
OK, who gets the most passenger journeys in Britain - is it trains or is it buses?
Presenter 1
Buses win hands down with more than three times the number of passenger journeys than national rail. That’s equivalent to 10,000 people getting on a bus across Great Britain every single minute of the day.
Presenter 2
Makes you think.
Presenter 1
It certainly does. And did you know that local bus services travelled 1.6 billion miles last year.
Presenter 2
That’s like saying local buses travel to the moon and back 9 times a day - or to the sun and back 8 times a year.
Presenter 1
That would be true if buses could drive in space, but they can’t. However, I can tell you that bus trips here in Britain only account for 5% of the total distance travelled compared to 9% for rail.
Presenter 1
Bet you didn’t know that 91 per cent of trains in Great Britain this year arrived at their destinations on time, up from just 79 per cent ten years ago.
Presenter 1
Yes I did know actually and now I’ve got a question for you: What’s the same as the distance from London to the South Pole?
Presenter 2
Not a clue.
Presenter 1
Answer: The total length of the National Rail route in 2010/11 which is 15.8 thousand kilometres.
Presenter 2
That’s all very well, but you haven’t mentioned roads.
Presenter 1
Very remiss. OK, let’s talk roads. If parked end to end, all the cars in Great Britain would measure nearly 75 thousand miles long.
Presenter 2
That’s about three times around the equator.
Presenter 1
It certainly is, or another way of looking at that statistic is to assume every motorway had three lanes in both directions and every ‘A’ road had one lane in both directions, cars would occupy every bit of all motorways and A roads, including the hard shoulders.
Presenter 2
That means there’d be no room for lorries.
Presenter 1
Quite so:and that would be a problem because since the late-1980s, more than 60 per cent of goods have been moved by road whereas those moved by rail accounted for around 9 per cent of all goods moved.
Presenter 2
OK, what about ships then?
Presenter 1
What about ships?
Presenter 2
We’re an island nation and ships are very important.
Presenter 1
Good point. UK sea ports handled just over half a billion tonnes of goods in 2010.
Presenter 2
Do you know that’s more than eight tonnes for every person in the UK - equivalent to a small lorry load?
Presenter 1
Is it?
Presenter 2
Trust me. And the shipping industry might have made the British Isles heavier last year by over one hundred million tonnes.
Presenter 1
How do you figure that out?
Presenter 2
Well that’s because 312 million tonnes of cargo were landed from ships, while only 199 million tonnes were loaded! I thought everybody knew that!
Presenter 1
For what you don’t know and would like to know about Great Britain’s transport statistics,
Presenter 2
Simply go to www.dft.gov.uk/statistics and all will be revealed.