Planning Sustainable Transport

Chapter 4

The trends

Travel and haulage

Figure 4.1 shows the increases over the past half-century in passenger movement (measured in person-kilometres), the movement of freight (measured in tonne-kilometres) and road traffic (measured in vehicle-kilometres). It also shows the improvement in the average standard of living (measured in real gross domestic product (GDP) (£) per head), at once both the cause and the effect of the rise in traffic and transport. The data are portrayed in the form of ‘indices’,¹ since this enables the trends to be compared despite the different units of measurement.

Figure 4.1  The growth of personal travel, freight, ...