Context

Road traffic open data provides street-level data for every junction-to-junction link on the motorway and 'A' road network, and for some minor roads in Great Britain.

Annual statistics are mostly presented in units of vehicle miles, which combines the number of vehicles on the road and how far they drive. Annual traffic statistics are compiled using data from around 8,000 roadside 12-hour manual counts, continuous data from automatic traffic counters, and data on road lengths.

The road traffic statistics team carry out a minor road traffic benchmarking exercise approximately every 10 years, with the aim to improve the accuracy of traffic estimates for minor roads. The results of the 2018 to 2019 exercise have been published and have resulted in revisions to the minor road traffic estimates covering 2010 to 2018. For more information about the minor roads benchmarking exercise, please refer to the documentation from the 2019 exercise.

Data disclaimer

Traffic figures at the regional and national level are robust, and are reported as National Statistics. However, DfT’s traffic estimates for individual road links and small areas are less robust, as they are not always based on up-to-date counts made at these locations. Where other more up-to-date sources of traffic data are available (e.g. from local highways authorities), this may provide a more accurate estimate of traffic at these locations.

Quality flags in data downloads

DfT’s road link level traffic estimates are calculated using a variety of methods, with some methods likely to produce more accurate estimates than others. The data tables available to download here contain a column - estimation_method – showing the method used to estimate traffic for each location and year. Figures having an estimation method of “Counted” are likely to be more accurate than those marked as “Estimated”, and the latter should be used with caution.

Content

• https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/about
• http://data.dft.gov.uk.s3.amazonaws.com/road-traffic/all-traffic-data-metadata.pdf

Acknowledgements

Road Trafic Statistics

Inspiration

• Street-level road traffic prediction
• EDA on roads at a national, regional and local authority level