Active travel (walking and cycling): April 2016 to March 2017

Active travel is measured as walking for at least 10 minutes or cycling to get to a particular destination. The following levels of activity were found (only including journeys made for active travel purposes).

Main points

• 5% of adults cycled at least once a week.(r)
• 3% of adults cycled at least three times a week.
• 61% of adults walked at least once a week.(r)
• 47% of adults walked at least three times a week.
• 51% of people living in urban areas walk at least three times a week, compared with 38% of those from rural areas.

National Survey respondents with dependent children were also asked how their children get to school.

• 42% of all primary school pupils typically walk to school and 1% of primary school pupils typically cycle to school.
• 34% of secondary school pupils typically walk to school and 1% of secondary school pupils typically cycle to school.

The final key measure relates to cycling injuries.

• There were 236 seriously injured pedal cyclists admitted to hospital (based on the Patient Episode Database for Wales).

(r) Revised on 1 February 2018.

Note

Questions on active travel were previously included in the National Survey in 2013-14 and 2014-15. In 2016-17, the National Survey was expanded to cover the topics previously asked on four other large-scale surveys. Although this has altered the context in which the questions are asked, and there have been minor changes in question wording, in general we have not found major differences in results for National Survey topics included before and after the expansion. Therefore the results for this topic can still be compared over time.