People who live in rural areas of England take at least 57 minutes on average to reach their nearest hospital by public transport, almost twice as long as their urban counterparts at 33 minutes, according to a report published by the Department for Transport.
The report also finds that those in urban areas have, on average, access to between three and four hospitals within an hour’s journey compared with one for rural residents.
For both urban and rural residents hospitals are the key local service which takes the longest to reach, but the time required for rural dwellers to reach vital services is not restricted to hospital care. It takes people in rural locations longer to access all eight key services covered by the report, including employment, health and education facilities.
It takes urban dwellers eight minutes to reach their local primary school, rising to 13 minutes for those living in rural locations.
The time required for both rural dwellers and their urban counterparts to reach their local education centre by public transport depends on the level at which they or their children are studying.
For example, the average time required to get to a secondary school in an urban area is 15 minutes compared with 28 minutes for people living in the country. For those accessing further education, the travel time is 17 minutes and 33 minutes respectively.
However, the time to reach important services might not be as problematic as it initially seems, since rural residents are more likely to use a car for these trips.
Cars account for 77% of trips made by rural residents, compared with 66% for urban residents generally and 40% for London residents, according to the National Travel Survey. When travel times by car are measured, the difference between urban and rural residents narrows sharply.
Even by car though, the time required to access hospital services is 50% longer for rural dwellers than it is for those living in urban environments, with the former having to travel an average of at least 24 minutes compared with just 16 minutes for the latter.
Methodology: Journey time statistics estimate theoretical travel times from where people live to a range of key services (centres of employment, primary and secondary schools, further education, GPs, hospitals, food stores and town centres) for England in 2014. Minimum travel times are measured for both car and public transport or walking, and for more than 32,000 local areas. Calculations rely on information on public transport timetables, the road network, and actual average travel speeds for these modes of transport.
