Transport statistics: Department for Transport and Office of Rail and Road

Department for Transport (DfT) statistics are the government's official figures on roads, vehicles, buses, travel behaviour and road safety, mostly covering Great Britain. The Office of Rail and Road (ORR), the rail and road regulator, publishes the official statistics on the mainline railway, including passenger journeys, punctuality and station usage. Fact-checkers use them to test claims about congestion, road deaths, electric vehicle numbers, bus decline and train performance.

Covers: UK · Release calendar

What it publishes

Road traffic estimates: vehicle miles travelled in Great Britain by vehicle type, road type and region, released quarterly (provisional) and annually.
Reported road casualties Great Britain: deaths and injuries from personal-injury collisions reported to the police through the STATS19 system, with provisional, final and additional-analysis releases each year.
Vehicle licensing statistics: licensed and newly registered vehicles by body type, fuel type (including battery electric) and area, using DVLA records.
Bus statistics: local bus passenger journeys, vehicle miles, fares, revenue, government support and concessionary travel, mostly annual with quarterly fares.
Transport Statistics Great Britain: the annual compendium drawing together tables from every DfT topic and from ORR rail data.
The National Travel Survey: how often, how far and by what mode people in England travel.
ORR passenger rail usage: quarterly passenger journeys, passenger kilometres and revenue on the mainline network, with long-run series in Tables 1220 and 1230.
ORR passenger rail performance and estimates of station usage: punctuality, cancellations and causes of delay each four-week rail period and quarter, plus annual entries, exits and interchanges for every station in Great Britain.

Key datasets

Road traffic statistics
Estimated vehicle miles by vehicle and road type for Great Britain, regions and local authorities, back to the 1990s, with daily traffic trends.
Updated: Quarterly (provisional) and annual
Road traffic estimates tables (TRA)
The TRA spreadsheet tables underlying the road traffic releases, including long-run series by vehicle type.
Updated: Quarterly and annual
Road safety statistics
Reported road casualties in Great Britain by severity, road user type and area. Provisional annual figures in May, final in July, extra analysis in September and first-half figures in November.
Updated: Several releases a year
Road safety statistics data tables
The RAS tables: casualties and collisions by severity, user type, age, road type, police force and local authority, including severity-adjusted series.
Updated: Annual, with interim updates
Vehicle licensing statistics
Licensed vehicles and first registrations by body type, fuel type, make and area, for Great Britain and the UK.
Updated: Annual in May, key tables quarterly; monthly early estimates of new registrations
Bus statistics
Local bus journeys, mileage, fares indices, costs, support and concessionary travel for England, Scotland and Wales, with long-run series.
Updated: Annual, with quarterly fares
Transport Statistics Great Britain
Annual summary tables across all modes, including spending, freight, aviation, maritime, rail and roads.
Updated: Annual
National Travel Survey
Household survey of personal travel in England: trips per person, distance, mode and purpose, from the 1970s onwards.
Updated: Annual
ORR passenger rail usage
Passenger journeys, kilometres and revenue on the mainline network in Great Britain, by sector and operator, with long-run series.
Updated: Quarterly
ORR passenger rail performance
Punctuality, reliability and causes of delay for mainline passenger trains in Great Britain, by operator, using Network Rail data.
Updated: Every four-week rail period and quarterly
ORR estimates of station usage
Annual entries, exits and interchanges at each station in Great Britain for April to March years, based primarily on ticket sales.
Updated: Annual
ORR rail fares
Index of average change in rail fares in Great Britain by ticket type and sector.
Updated: Annual

APIs and downloads

DfT road traffic API
Open JSON API at roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk with endpoints for average annual daily flow, count points, raw counts, and local authority and regional traffic. No authentication; results are paginated.
DfT road traffic map and downloads
Interactive map of traffic count points on every A road and motorway link in Great Britain, with CSV downloads by count point, local authority and region.
Road safety open data (STATS19)
Collision, vehicle and casualty level CSV files from 1979, with a data guide. Free under the Open Government Licence; no key.
DfT statistical data tables
The Transport Statistics Finder lists every DfT statistical table; tables are ODS spreadsheets on GOV.UK.
ORR data portal
All ORR statistics as ODS tables, many with CSV versions. No API or key; files are downloaded from each topic page.

When it publishes

DfT and ORR release official statistics at 9:30am on pre-announced dates. DfT lists all annual, quarterly and compendium releases for the year ahead in its forthcoming publications schedule. Road casualty figures follow a fixed cycle: provisional annual results in May, final results in July, additional analysis in September and first-half provisional figures in November. ORR publishes quarterly usage and performance releases and posts four-weekly operational data on its portal once validated; its dates are on the portal's publication dates page.

How to use it to check a claim

For road deaths or serious injuries, use the final Reported road casualties Great Britain results and quote the year, the geography (Great Britain, not the UK) and whether the serious injury figure is adjusted or unadjusted.
For long-term trends in serious injuries, use DfT's severity-adjusted series, because police forces moving to injury-based reporting systems recorded more injuries as serious from around 2012.
For claims about traffic growth or congestion, check the road traffic estimates for vehicle miles; traffic volume is not the same as journey times or delays, which DfT reports separately.
For electric car numbers, use the vehicle licensing tables and decide whether the claim is about the licensed stock or about new registrations in a period, and whether plug-in hybrids are included.
For train punctuality, check which ORR measure is used: 'on time' (within one minute at each recorded station) is much stricter than the Public Performance Measure, which allows five or ten minutes at destination.
For busiest station or station passenger numbers, use ORR estimates of station usage for the named April to March year and remember interchanges are counted separately from entries and exits.
For bus service decline, compare like with like in the bus statistics tables: passenger journeys and vehicle miles move differently, and London is usually shown separately from the rest of England.

Common mistakes

Reported road casualties only include collisions that police know about; many non-fatal injuries never reach STATS19, so the figures are not a complete count of all road injuries.
Comparing serious injury numbers across years without severity adjustment mixes changes in recording practice with real change.
Most DfT statistics cover Great Britain or England only; Northern Ireland road and vehicle data are published separately.
Station usage figures are modelled from ticket sales, so season tickets and travelcards involve assumptions about how often they are used.
ORR four-weekly rail periods do not line up with calendar months, so period figures compared with monthly data from other sources can appear inconsistent.
Rail and bus 'journeys' count each boarding of a train or bus, not a complete door-to-door trip, so they can rise with more changes of service.

How many people die on UK roads each year, and where is the official figure?

The official count for Great Britain is in DfT's Reported road casualties Great Britain annual release, with final figures published each July and provisional figures in May. It covers deaths within 30 days of a police-reported collision. Northern Ireland figures are published by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, so a UK total needs both sources.

How do I get traffic count data for a particular road?

DfT's road traffic website maps every count point on A roads and motorways in Great Britain. Each point has annual average daily flow figures by vehicle type, downloadable as CSV. The same data are available through the free road traffic API, which needs no key. Minor road figures are estimates rather than direct counts.

Which is the busiest railway station in Great Britain?

ORR answers this each year in its estimates of station usage, which rank stations by entries and exits for the April to March year. The tables also give interchanges, which matter at hub stations. Because the figures are based on ticket sales, ORR's methodology notes explain the assumptions for travelcards and stations within London fare zones.

What is the difference between 'on time' and PPM for trains?

Both are ORR punctuality measures from Network Rail data. 'On time' counts a train as punctual only if it arrives within one minute of schedule at each recorded station stop. The older Public Performance Measure counts trains arriving at their final destination within five minutes, or ten for long-distance services. The same operator can therefore score very differently on the two measures.

Questions answered using this source

Links checked 2026-10-13. This page describes what the source publishes and gives no verdict on any claim.