Demand for daily travel has peaked

In the UK we each travel an annual 7,000 miles in the course of our daily routines - a distance equivalent to a return trip from London to New York. It has been assumed that if our finances allowed, we would travel even further in search of a greater choice of schools, shops and places of work. However, a new paper from the UCL Centre for Transport Studies shows that demand for routine 'daily travel' has already reached saturation point. 'History shows that as incomes have risen, we've moved from walking to using trains and buses, and then cars - all of which enable us to travel further and faster,? says Dr David Metz, author of the paper which will be published in the September issue of the journal Transport Reviews . ?The conventional assumption is that as incomes rise, we travel more, but this raises a number of concerns. Assuming the economy grows in future, we would face demands for more transport infrastructure and the accompanying increase in public expenditure, along with the need to tackle the environmental impact of a transport sector with an even bigger carbon footprint. 'However, what this new analysis of the figures actually shows is that the distance people travel has remained constant for the last fifteen years,' continues Dr Metz.