Travel Time Reporting Tool
We're committed to sharing more information on the performance of our road network with you.
One of the ways we're doing this is through our travel time reporting tool, which uses historic travel time information to help you make the best use of our roads.
This tool doesn't show live traffic information. Visit our Travel updates section for details of planned road closure and active traffic alerts on our network. For live travel updates and alerts, please visit Traffic England.
How to use the tool
Select road links from a map of our network. A road link is a section of our network, typically between on and off slip roads.
Click a road link on the map to call up historic travel time information for that section of road, including a summary of annual performance.
You can view travel time data by:
- average delay (one of our corporate key performance indicators)
- total delay
- reliability
- average speed
Our technical guidance gives you more information about these metrics. Each metric gives a different perspective on how our roads are performing.
We first began to use these travel time metrics as an official measure of our performance from 1 April 2020. The tool currently contains data from the first two financial years of reporting (1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 and 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022).
If you'd like to download the raw data which feeds into the tool, please visit the National Highways open data page.
Impact of the Covid-19 pandemic
The number of journeys on our network fell significantly in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020–21, average traffic levels were less than 70% of levels seen in previous years. In 2021-22 average traffic levels rebounded significantly to 92% of those seen in previous years, but were still below pre-pandemic.
Our average delay key performance indicator
The primary metric in the Travel Time Reporting Tool is our average delay key performance indicator (KPI), which measures delay in seconds per vehicle per mile. People often ask what this actually means, and how they can relate it to their own journey.
Our definition of average delay looks at the difference between road users' travel time and the time it would take to travel at the speed limit.
We've developed a simple tool to help bring our delay KPI to life.
Select a road type and adjust the miles travelled below
Figures represent annual average delay (April 2020 to March 2021)
Average delay
in seconds per vehicle per mile
Miles travelled
No delay
With no delay (driving at the speed limit), travelling for 0 miles on the will take
With a typical delay
With 0 seconds of delay per mile, 500 miles on the Motorway will take
A difference of
* All figures are rounded to the nearest minute, so there may be some minor discrepancies
How we use travel time metrics
Travel time metrics help us develop the Route Strategies that underpin our future investment planning process. They help us identify the places on our network where investment will deliver most benefit.
You'll find more information about travel times on our network and our strategy for minimising delay in our report: Managing delay on the Strategic Road Network.
