Public transport travel time matrices for Great Britain (TTM 2023)

Overview

This dataset provides ready-to-use door-to-door public transport travel time estimates for each of the 2011 Census at the lower super output area (LSOA) and data zone (DZ) units (42,000 LSOA/DZ units in total) in Great Britain (GB) to every other reachable within 150 minutes during the morning peak for the year 2023 using. This information comprises an all-to-all travel time matrix (TTM) at the national level. The TTM are estimated for public transport, bicycle, and walking. Public transport estimates are estimated for two times of departure, specifically during the morning peak and at night. Altogether, these TTMs present a range of opportunities for researchers and practitioners, such as the development of accessibility measures, spatial connectivity, and the evaluation of public transport service changes throughout the day.

A full data descriptor is available in 'technical_note.html' file as part of the records of this repository.

Data records

The TTM structure follows a row matrix format, where each row represents a unique origin-destination pair. The TTMs are offered in a set of sequentially named .parquet files (more information about Parquet format at: https://parquet.apache.org/). The structure contains one directory for each mode, where ‘bike’, ‘pt’, and ‘walk’, correspond to bicycle, public transport, and walking, respectively.

Walking

The walking TTM contains 13.3 million rows and three columns. The table below offers a description of the columns.

Table 1: Walking travel time matrix codebook.

Variable
Type
Description

from_id
nominal
2011 LSOA/DZ geo-code of origin

to_id
nominal
2011 LSOA/DZ geo-code of destination

travel_time_p050
numeric
Travel time walking in minutes

Bicycle

The bicycle TTM includes 40 million rows and four columns which are described in the table below.

Table 2: Bicycle travel time matrix codebook.

Variable
Type
Description

from_id
nominal
2011 LSOA/DZ geo-code of origin

to_id
nominal
2011 LSOA/DZ geo-code of destination

travel_time_p050
numeric
Travel time by bicycle in minutes

travel_time_adj
numeric
Adjusted travel time by bicycle in minutes. This adds 5 minutes for locking to the unadjusted estimate.

Public transport

The LSOA/DZ TTM consists of six columns and 265 million rows. The internal structure of the records is displayed in the table below:

Table 3: Public transport LSOA/DZ travel time matrix codebook.

Variable
Type
Description

from_id
nominal
2011 LSOA/DZ geo-code of origin

to_id
nominal
2011 LSOA/DZ geo-code of destination

travel_time_p025
numeric
25 travel time percentile by public transport in minutes

travel_time_p050
numeric
50 travel time percentile by public transport in minutes

travel_time_p075
numeric
75 travel time percentile by public transport in minutes

time_of_day
nominal
A discrete value indicating the time of departure used. Levels: ‘am’ = 7 a.m.; ‘pm’ = 9 p.m.