Strategic Road Network travel time data published for 2025-26
By William Fletcher MBE, Chief Executive Officer, New Reg Limited
The Department for Transport has released official travel time and congestion figures covering England's motorways and major A roads for the year ending June 2026.
Official figures from the Department for Transport cover congestion levels and travel times across England's Strategic Road Network for the full year running from July 2025 to June 2026, giving drivers and planners the most current picture of how traffic is moving on the country's busiest roads.
The Strategic Road Network comprises the motorways and major A roads managed by National Highways in England. These are the routes that carry the heaviest volumes of long-distance and freight traffic, and the data published by the Department for Transport tracks how reliably journeys can be completed across them over time, as well as how conditions on locally managed A roads across Great Britain compare.
The release covers a 12-month period ending in June 2026, meaning it captures seasonal variation across the full calendar year, from winter conditions through to summer travel peaks. That breadth makes the dataset particularly useful for understanding where delay is concentrated and how congestion patterns shift across different parts of the network.
For everyday drivers, the figures provide context for journey planning on long-distance routes, particularly those who regularly use motorways or trunk A roads for commuting or business travel. Understanding where and when the network is under most pressure can inform decisions about when to travel, even if the underlying causes of congestion, ranging from roadworks to incident management, vary from route to route.