On 5 October 2026 the National Statistics Office released the first results of the National Household Travel Survey, which the NSO describes as its first all-India survey of household travel: how people get to work, to school, to the market and to relatives in another town. The headline numbers are easy to repeat. The rules behind them decide what they mean, and a practitioner who quotes the survey should know both.
What was asked, and of whom
Between July 2025 and June 2026 the survey covered 14,274 villages and 10,377 urban blocks: 4,92,023 households and 20,34,371 people. The Ministry of Railways needed the data for its own planning, and the press note says so, but the questions go well beyond rail. For students aged 6 and above and workers aged 15 and above, the survey records whether they make a regular trip to their institution or workplace, by what main mode, how long it takes, when they leave home, and what it costs each month. For everyone aged 6 and above it records trips made for other purposes, and for the household it records journeys that keep someone away overnight.
All of this is published so far as all-India estimates, split by rural and urban areas and in places by sex. The press note mentions a few states in its text and gives no table by state.
The one-kilometre rule
The survey counts a trip only if it covers a kilometre or more. Anything shorter was not recorded as travel at all. This single rule shapes every share in the release.
Take the figure that 66.4% of students aged 6 and above travel to their school or college. The other third includes children who do not attend and children whose school is 600 metres away. The survey cannot tell the two apart. A village with a school in every hamlet will report less student travel than a village where children walk three kilometres to a consolidated school, and the first village is the better served. The same holds for workers: a lower share who travel to work can mean less work outside the home, or work closer to it.
Walking is affected most. Short walks are the trips the rule drops, so the walking shares in the release (37.0% of students who travel, 28.3% of workers who travel) describe walks of a kilometre or more, a narrower thing than walking to school or work.
How people get to work, and how they travel otherwise
Among workers who travel a kilometre or more to a workplace, 42.6% go mainly by two-wheeler: 37.1% in rural India and 52.3% in towns and cities. In rural India walking is almost level with it at 36.6%. Buses carry only 6.7% of workers who travel, and metro, monorail, suburban rail and tram carry 5.0% of urban workers, rising to 20.7% in Maharashtra, 16.5% in West Bengal and 14.4% in Delhi.
The bus matters elsewhere. It carries 29.5% of students who travel and 55.8% of household journeys that keep someone away overnight, with trains carrying another 17.7%. Seven in ten of those overnight journeys, 70.2%, are for family, social or religious reasons. Leisure and tourism account for 7.4%.
Who goes out to work
The sharpest pattern in the release is by sex. Of all workers, 61.9% of men and 41.9% of women make a trip of a kilometre or more to a workplace. In rural India the figures are 59.6% and 37.7%; in towns, 66.6% and 52.9%. Among students the sexes are close: 67.3% of boys and 65.2% of girls aged 6 and above travel to their institution.
Women who do travel to a fixed workplace also spend less on it: ₹533 a month on average against ₹835 for men. In rural India the gap is wider, ₹307 against ₹674. The survey reports these as averages over those who make the trip, and the note does not say how many of them pay nothing at all.
None of this tells us why. Home-based work, work in the same village and a smaller radius of movement would all produce the same numbers. The useful step is to read these figures beside the Periodic Labour Force Survey, which uses the same current weekly status to classify workers, and ask where women's work is located before asking why they travel less.
Unpaid work, counted as travel
The survey also asked about trips for every other purpose. Among people aged 6 and above who made such a trip, 54.1% made one for unpaid domestic services for their household: 51.5% in rural and 60.1% in urban India. Unpaid caregiving accounts for another 2.2%. Counting errands as trips puts unpaid domestic work into transport data. The press note gives no split of this table by sex, and that split is the one most worth asking for when the full report and unit-level data are released.
Four things to check before you quote it
- The mode shares add to about 101%. Every column of the two mode tables sums to between 101.1% and 101.4%. The note does not explain this. Quote the shares as printed and do not add them up.
- The note uses "fixed workplace" loosely. Its summary says 42.6% of workers commute to fixed workplaces by two-wheeler, while the table behind it covers fixed and non-fixed workplaces together. Travel time and cost, by contrast, are for fixed workplaces only.
- There is no state table yet. Statements about states in the press note come from its text. Wait for the report before ranking states.
- The release does not report distance. It gives time and cost, so "average trip of 25 minutes" says nothing about how far people go on a two-wheeler and on foot.
Where to find it on ImpactMojo
Every all-India figure in the press note is now in the Travel Survey Explorer in the Data Room, with charts for mode, sex, travel time, cost, other trips and overnight journeys, and a note on each limitation above. The survey also has an entry in the Dataverse, linking to the NSO factsheet. When the full report and unit-level data come out, we will add the state tables.