| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Weighting | The results are weighted to represent the New Zealand population according to age and gender. |
| Survey years | Survey years run from July until June in the next year. |
| Household | Group of people living at the same address, sharing facilities but not necessarily financially interdependent. May be an individual, couple, family, flatmates or a combination of these (for example, a family plus boarder). |
| Professional driver | Someone employed to transport goods or people, including couriers, truck drivers, bus and taxi drivers. Trips by professional drivers in the course of their work are excluded. Other travel by professional drivers (including travel from home to work) is included. If a person drives a lot for work, but this is not the primary purpose of the job (for example, a plumber, real estate agent, district nurse), then all trips by this person are recorded. |
| Travel | Includes all on-road travel by any mode: any walk along a public footpath or road, cycling on a public road or footpath or some air and sea travel. Excludes off-road activities such as tramping, mountain biking, walking around a farm. |
| Trips | A trip is a non-stop leg of travel by a single mode. For example, driving to a friend's house with a stop at the shops on the way would be two trips. Catching a bus to work could involve at least three trips - the walk to the bus stop, the bus to the city and the walk from the bus stop to work. Trip distances as travelled are used where satellite navigation is used. Otherwise, the shortest on-route distance according to online map services is applied. |
| Trip chains | Trip chains are strings of trips which end at home or at work, or where the person stopped for 30 minutes or more. So, for example, if someone travelled to work but dropped off someone on the way, that would be considered one trip chain. If, on their way home, they stopped to buy groceries for 35 minutes, that would be considered a trip chain to the shop, then another to home. |
| Inclusions and exclusions | Walking trips are included if they are 100m or more. This analysis only includes people in households where each member of the household fully completed the survey. Travel off-road or on private property is not included. Therefore, tramping, walking or driving around a farm, walking in shopping malls etc. is excluded from the survey. |
| Disability | The HTS uses the Washington Group Short Set disability questions regarding seeing, hearing, remembering or concentrating, washing or dressing, walking or understanding language. The most severe of the disability types reported by each user is used. |
| Acessibility | Acessibility concerns whether people can easily get where they want or need to go. This is measured by asking the question "how many of the facilities* (such as shops, schools, post shops, libraries and medical services) that you want to go to, can you easily get to?" |
| Ethnicity | Respondents can enter more multiple ethnicities. For summaries by ethnicity presented here, some double counting occurs. This applies to both the trip summaries and stated populations. |
| Gender | Perople can enter Female, Male or Diverse for their gender, however sample sizes for Diverse are small so care should be taken reporting results for them (see section on uncertainty). |
| Urban areas | Main Urban Areas, Secondary Urban Areas and Rural areas are as defined by Stats NZ from the 2006 Census. Main Urban Areas are very large urban areas centred on a city or major urban centre. This uses the historical StatsNZ criteria of an urban centre with a population of 30,000 or more and includes satellite areas, for example, Kapiti and Cambridge. Secondary Urban Areas are defiened as per the historical StatsNZ criteria of a secondary urban centre of between 10,000 and 29,999 or a rural area with a population of fewer than 10, |
The information presented in the related pages here is based on travel reported in the New Zealand Household Travel Survey from a 2 day travel diary and associated questions.
It is weighted at the household, person and trip level to represent the population of New Zealand and their travel on an average annual basis.
Graphic summaries of the survey can be found here.
More indepth data and tables to download can be found here.
Definitions
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Public transport (PT) | Bus/train/ferry travel. |
| Local vs. non-local (for PT trips). | The threshold for local vs non-local public transport trips is 60km or 1 hour. |
| Other | Other includes aircraft and boat travel and mobility scooters, as well as other modes like horse riding. Skateboard and children in push chairs are included with pedestrians. |
| Bicycle | Excludes activities taking place outside the road or footpath environment, such as mountain biking. |
| Passenger | Passenger in a light 4-wheeled private motor vehicle (car, van, ute or SUV). Passengers in buses and trains are coded under the public transport category. Taxi, aircraft and boat passengers are included in the 'Other' category. |
| Pedestrian | Walking, jogging, on skateboards or mobility scooters and children on tricycles. |
| Electric scooter | Data collection for these started in 2021/22 |
Some of these categories have changed from previous releases of the data. As such, summaries based on the definitions may have changed.
| Purpose | Description |
|---|---|
| Home | Any trip to the home address or any trip returning to the place where spending the night. |
| Went to work | Travel to main place of work and travel to any other jobs. |
| Trip for work | Work-related travel other than to and from work (for example, travelling to meetings or clients). |
| Completed study/education | Travel by students only and includes institutions such as primary and secondary schools, and universities. It will also include travel to preschool education such as kindergarten, play centre, crຌhe, kōhanga reo etc. |
| Shopping | Entering any premises that sells goods or hires them for money. A purchase need not be made. |
| Social visit/entertainment | Entertainment in a public or private place for example, eating out at a restaurant or food court, picnics. |
| Sport and exercise | Active or passive participation in sporting activities and travel for which the main goal is exercise. |
| Personal business | Stops made to transact personal business where no goods were involved. This includes stops made for medical or dental needs and for dealing with government agencies involved with social welfare. |
| Accompany someone | When the reason of the travel is primarily for someone else's purpose. |
| Dropped someone off/picked someone up | Travel primarily to transport someone else. |
| Pick up/drop off something | Travel primarily to transport something. |
| Change mode of travel | When the purpose of the stop was only to change to another mode of transport. |
Some of these categories have changed from previous releases of the data. As such, summaries based on the definitions may have changed.
More information on the methodology to collect and summarise the data can he found here.
Face to face surveying was interrupted by COVID 19 restrictions in various ways from March 2020 to April 2022. The 2019/20 survey year was cut short and ended in late March 2020, and the next survey year did not start until Aug 2020.
New Zealand used two different methods of categorising COVID restrictions. The Alert Level System was used from March 2019 until December 2021 when it was replaced with the Traffic Light Setting (which finished in September 2022). Both systems set out rules on what activities and interactions were allowed in order to reduce the impact of COVID. More information about the history of the alert level changes can be found archived here and of the Traffic Light System archived here.
Face to face surveying was only able to take place in locations at Alert levels 1 and 2, but not 3 and 4. Face to face surveying also needed to halt at Traffic light setting Red (Dec 2021, 1st introduced), but a form of contactless recruitment, followed by phone/video interviewing was able to be used at Red from late January 2022 onwards, with face to face interviewing able to resume (although with the option of phone/video interviewing still available) at Orange (14 April 2022 onwards) and subsequently. Results will reflect the travel patterns observed when and where surveying could take place.
Disclaimer
All reasonable endeavours are made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this report. However, the information is provided without warranties of any kind including accuracy, completeness, timeliness or fitness for any particular purpose.
The Ministry of Transport excludes liability for any loss, damage or expense, direct or indirect, and however caused, whether through negligence or otherwise, resulting from any person or organisation’s use of, or reliance on, the information provided in this report.
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Additional information
For more information about the background to the survey see the Ministry of Transport website here. Enquires relating to the Household Travel Survey may be directed to the Ministry of Transport at travelsurvey@transport.govt.nz, PO Box 3175, Wellington, or info@transport.govt.nz.