Planned changes to the Daily domestic transport use by mode publication
Updated 10 June 2026
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/daily-domestic-transport-use-by-mode/planned-changes-to-the-daily-domestic-transport-use-by-mode-publication
Summary
The Department for Transport (DfT) publishes daily usage of selected domestic transport modes in Great Britain on a monthly basis. We are seeking users’ views on planned changes. These changes are to maintain the relevancy and improve the coherence of the publication.
Feedback on the changes, and its impact on you, can be provided by completing the survey. We recommend that you read through this document prior to filling in the survey, to understand what is being changed and why.
Background
The Daily domestic transport use by mode publication was created to provide a timely indication of the demand on the transport network during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, the methodology adopted was designed to meet an exceptional set of circumstances. It balanced quality, stability, and comparability across the transport modes that are presented in the publication, against the timeliness of releasing the information to help users understand rapid changes in travel behaviour.
In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, 5 years on from the initial publication of the series, the department has reviewed the analysis and methodology to ensure the publication continues to meet current user needs. This review has identified improvements to how best to present the data to reflect latest travel patterns and usage of the analysis.
Summary of the planned changes
The department has reviewed the publication as a whole and plan on making the following changes:
- re-indexing all transport modes in the publication to the same baseline
- publishing a separate series which provides the year-on-year change, based on the re-indexed series
- calculating the index for all transport modes using rolling 7-day averages
- removing five transport modal series from the analysis to balance value and quality
- changing reported publishing periods to be consistent across modes
You can view the published proof-of-concept table that illustrates how the analysis could be presented once the changes have been implemented.
These improvements will present the analysis on a more consistent and coherent basis. The changes will allow users to:
- conduct cross-modal comparisons with greater ease
- interpret and understand the analysis with greater ease
- conduct additional analysis with greater freedom
We are keen to understand how these affect your current and future engagement with the publication and the value it offers.
Examples of how the commentary can change, once the planned changes are made, are presented in the below table.
Table 1: Examples of commentary after planned changes are implemented
| Commentary section | Currently published | Post-changes – applied to all transport modes |
|---|---|---|
| Key message | Bus boardings outside of London on Thursday 13 April 2026 were 79% of the equivalent day in 2019. | Bus boardings outside of London in the week ending Thursday 13 April 2026 were 85% of the average usage in 2025. |
| Year-on-year | This is 7 percentage points higher compared to the equivalent day in the previous year (72% on Monday 14 April 2025). | This is 4 percentage points higher than the equivalent week of the previous year (81% in the week ending Thursday 2 April 2025). |
| Comparison between latest and previous publishing period | In the current publishing period weekday bus usage has been between 68% to 92% of the pre-COVID-19 baseline, in comparison to between 68% to 91% in the last publishing period. | In May 2026, weekday bus usage ranged between 68% to 92% of the average usage in 2025. In comparison to the previous month, April’s weekday usage ranged between 68% to 91%. |
Note: Data used in this table is dummy data and for illustrative purposes only.
Further information on the reasons for the changes and the planned changes can be found further in this document.
Planned changes
1. Re-indexing the series
The department is planning to re-index the series to a static baseline which will be the average usage across the calendar year 2025, a post-COVID-19 year that is unaffected by the pandemic.
The analysis presented in the publication is an indexed series. Values presented show how values compare against a certain period in time as a percentage. Currently, for this publication, values are compared to a certain pre-COVID-19 point in time, detailed in the technical notes. For example, on a given day, if usage is at 115% on 1 January 2025 for a given mode, it means that usage was 15% higher on 1 January 2025 compared to average usage in 2019 – the the pre-COVID-19 period of time – for that given mode.
The change to the baseline is for two main reasons which supports a clearer interpretation of trends and enables more consistent cross modal comparisons:
- To ensure all modes are indexed to the same reference point.
- To reflect the new level of post-pandemic demand on the transport network that is seen in the current publication.
The series will be backdated to 1 March 2020, where the data is available, to allow users to analyse patterns over the pandemic period and subsequent recovery using a consistent post pandemic reference point.
The department is not planning to publish a series that has a pre-pandemic baseline.
2. Year-on-year analysis
The department is planning to include in the publication an additional series that presents the year-on-year change. This will involve comparing usage on each day with the equivalent day in the previous year. In most cases, this will involve comparing data from 364 days earlier so that the same day of the week is used. This will be adjusted for known, repeated days of abnormal usage (such as public holidays) to ensure appropriate comparisons. For example, comparing Easter weekend usage, where the timing differs between years. Further information on the proposed methodology can be found in Annex A.
The department is planning to start this series from 1 January 2024. This reflects the intended purpose of the series, which is to support interpretation of recent changes in transport usage under more stable, post pandemic conditions.
Year‑on‑year comparisons for earlier periods (for example, 2023 compared with 2022) largely reflect the recovery from the pandemic. While these changes are real and meaningful, they capture a different type of effect to the shorter-term movements that many users associate with year‑on‑year analysis.
Users who wish to analyse pandemic recovery or make comparisons across earlier years will still be able to do so using the underlying historical data published in the main tables and in related statistics that cover the pandemic period are published, such as:
- Transport for London’s Network Demand Dashboard
- Department for Transport’s Bus statistics series
- Department for Transport’s Road traffic statistics series
- Office of Rail and Road’s passenger rail usage series
3. Rolling 7-day averages
The department is planning to present the index for all transport modes using rolling 7-day averages, where daily figures represent the average across the 7 days up to and including that day. This is to reduce short-term volatility and to make the approach consistent across all modes, which supports clearer and more consistent cross-modal comparisons.
The rolling 7-day average will be calculated by averaging the usage over the week. In the publication, the rolling 7-day average will be attributed to the last date in the rolling 7-day period. That is, the figure for 7 January 2025 will be the average usage from 1 January 2025 to 7 January 2025, inclusive.
Although this will reduce the magnitude of daily variation, the weekly and other seasonal trends are still visible in the data, and clearer for the modes that used to be based off daily usage figures.
4. Transport modes
The department is planning to remove the following transport modes from the publication:
- motor vehicle breakdown - cars, light commercial vehicles and heavy goods vehicles
- National Rail excluding the Elizabeth line
- cycling series
Motor vehicles
The department is planning to present the daily figures for all motor vehicle traffic only. This balances the Code of Practice for Statistics principles of value and quality, with the inclusion of all motor vehicle traffic enabling customers to continue to monitor changes in road traffic.
National Rail – Elizabeth Line
The Elizabeth Line is currently excluded because the baseline predates its operation. Under a proposed 2025 baseline, this exclusion would no longer be necessary, as it would already be included in the reference period.
Cycling
The cycling series has not been updated since 7 April 2023 and, as such, will be removed from the publication. Historical daily cycling data will still be available in previous versions of this release, which are accessible via GOV.UK and the UK National Archives.
5. Publishing periods
The department is planning to change the publishing periods to be the latest whole month of data available across modes. This is to align the publishing periods for consistency and improve comparability between modes. Daily data will still be published to the latest date that is available at the time of publication, but the commentary in the bulletin will cover the latest month of complete data.
The department is open to whether the comparison period should be the previous month, or the same month in the previous year. Views can be provided in the accompanying survey.
Reason for change
The Code of Practice for Statistics emphasises that government statisticians should consider adjusting outputs where appropriate, to maintain public value. In assessing against the standards of quality and value, set out in the Code, we believe that the planned changes will enhance value, improve engagement and interpretation from users.
The planned changes apply a more consistent methodology across transport modes while remaining sensitive to the different patterns of demand for these modes. This consistency supports clearer interpretation of and enables users to analyse and compare trends more easily, including through the introduction of year-on-year analysis. The changes will also simplify the presentation of the statistics across outputs, such as the HTML bulletin, by reducing the need for mode-specific caveats. This will help users to understand and use the data more confidently and efficiently.
How to feed back
We invite all users to complete the following feedback survey to express their views on the above planned changes by 5pm Thursday 16 July 2026.
The survey includes questions on how the planned changes will impact user engagement and interaction with published content.
Annex A – year-on-year methodology
The year-on-year change will compare the latest usage against the equivalent day in the previous year. For days of “normal” usage, this will be calculated by subtracting 364 days from the latest date. This will result in comparing the comparable date and day of week in the previous year.
For days of abnormal usage that is repeated each year, such as public holidays, an adjustment will be made to ensure the equivalent day in both years are compared. This will result in moving some “normal” days around to allow this comparison to be conducted. An example of this can be seen in the below table, illustrating how the Easter weekend, which changes between years, is handled.
| Day of week | Latest year - latest date | Latest year - day type | Previous year - comparator date | Previous year - day type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | 2024-03-26 | normal | 2023-03-28 | normal |
| Wednesday | 2024-03-27 | normal | 2023-03-29 | normal |
| Thursday | 2024-03-28 | normal | 2023-03-30 | normal |
| Friday | 2024-03-29 | Good Friday | 2023-04-07 | Good Friday |
| Saturday | 2024-03-30 | Holy Saturday | 2023-04-08 | Holy Saturday |
| Sunday | 2024-03-31 | Easter Sunday | 2023-04-09 | Easter Sunday |
| Monday | 2024-04-01 | Easter Monday | 2023-04-10 | Easter Monday |
| Tuesday | 2024-04-02 | normal | 2023-04-04 | normal |
| Wednesday | 2024-04-03 | normal | 2023-04-05 | normal |
| Thursday | 2024-04-04 | normal | 2023-04-06 | normal |
| Friday | 2024-04-05 | normal | 2023-03-31 | normal |
| Saturday | 2024-04-06 | normal | 2023-04-01 | normal |
| Sunday | 2024-04-07 | normal | 2023-04-02 | normal |
| Monday | 2024-04-08 | normal | 2023-04-03 | normal |