Traffic on Great Britain’s roads reached another record high – 324bn vehicle miles (vm), up by 1.7% – in the year ending 31 March, with vans again leading the increase (up by 4.5%), according to official figures.
This is 3.2% higher than the pre-recession peak in 12 months ending September 2007.
Traffic has now increased every quarter in the last four years and on all categories of road.
Although the number of cars on the roads rose during the year by 1.4% to a record 252.9bn vm, van traffic rose three times as fast, increasing by 4.5% to a new peak of 49.6bn vm.
For the last four years, van traffic has increased on average by 4.8% a year, and has been the fastest growing traffic type (in percentage terms) over this time.
While lorry traffic fell over the year by 0.8% to 16.6 bvm, DfT officials said HGV traffic is 7.5% higher than four years ago, making it the second fastest growing traffic type in this period.
Officials said provisional estimates for traffic on rural ‘A’ roads and rural minor roads were the highest ever recorded.
Compared with 2016, traffic on rural ‘A’ roads, grew by 2.4% to 94.3bn vm. A total of 45.7bn vm were driven on rural minor roads on the year.
The number of miles driven on motorways increased by 1% to 67.7bn vm; A road traffic increased by 1.6% and traffic on minor roads as a whole increased by 2.1%.
