High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Friday, September 23, 2011
Walking
The Scottish Household Survey asks adults whether, in the previous seven days, they walked more than a quarter of a mile in order to go somewhere (e.g. to work, to the shops, or to visit friends). In 2010, 62 per cent of adults had done so. The percentages for men and women were similar. Adults aged 16-19 were the most likely to have walked to go somewhere, with 77 per cent reporting this, compared with around two thirds of those 40-49, over half of those aged 50-79, and around a third of those aged 80+. The percentage did not vary much with household income.
Fifty-one per cent of adults had walked for pleasure or to keep fit (including jogging and walking a dog). The chart below shows how this varies with sex and age. Walking for pleasure or to keep fit tended to rise with household income.
National Travel Survey (NTS) results for Scotland suggest that the average distance walked per person per year (for journeys for which walking was the main mode of transport) fell from 251 miles in 1985/86 to 171 miles in 2007/2008. Due to the small sample size, NTS results for Scotland are provided for two- or three-year periods - and, even then, are subject to sampling variability, so one should not make too much of some apparently small period-to-period changes.
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Source: Scottish Transport Statistics
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