Transport planning, at its best, is a discipline of anticipation — spotting subtle shifts, interpreting patterns, and designing infrastructure not just for today, but for the kind of future we’re hurtling toward. It’s about reading between the lines of data, and sometimes, headlines.
So, when Universal Studios announced plans for a new theme park in Bedfordshire, my reaction wasn’t one of excitement about thrill rides. In fact, full disclosure, I hate rollercoasters and cannot think of anything worse. Always have. But even if the thought of vertical drops makes my stomach turn, the announcement made my transport planner’s instincts sit bolt upright.
Because buried beneath the hype and the headline figures was something far more revealing: a signal that leisure travel, long treated as peripheral to the ‘serious business’ of commuting but is now becoming a central force shaping our transport systems. Universal Studios will not just be a leisure destination, but a generator for demand, a disruptor of patterns, and a test case for how well (or how badly) our infrastructure serves people beyond the Monday-to-Friday commute.
It might look like a one-off. But in truth, it is a symptom of a wider transformation that’s already reshaping our networks – quietly, steadily, and with growing urgency.
Leisure travel isn’t a marginal, weekend-only consideration anymore. In fact, it now dominates much of the UK’s transport system, particularly on our railways. Recent news stories have pointed to a significant shift: leisure passengers now outnumber commuters on the trains. This Easter saw roads, rails, and even airports creak under the pressure of holidaymakers. Yet despite this reality, leisure travel remains underrepresented in our transport and planning models, in our policy documents, and too often, in planners’ imagination.
For decades, the golden thread of transport planning has been the commuter. Peak-time flows, journey-to-work data, business case appraisals focused on lost productivity. But the world has changed and continues to evolve. Working from home, hybrid schedules, and digital workplaces have decimated traditional peak commuting, while leisure travel has quietly taken its place as the primary driver of passenger movement across many parts of the network.
Rail industry data from 2024 confirmed what many suspected: the majority of rail journeys are now for leisure, not business. In the busiest periods – bank holidays, summer weekends, even some Fridays – leisure travel drives demand, revenue, and disruption. The Easter getaway was a stark example, with engineering works on key routes and huge crowds at stations, travellers faced long delays, packed trains, and overburdened infrastructure.
This shift creates a tension in the system. Our policy frameworks, forecasting tools, and funding mechanisms are still geared toward weekday peak travel. Meanwhile, leisure travel is often seen as optional or discretionary and is therefore deprioritised in strategy, investment, and delivery. This isn’t just an oversight – it is a strategic blind spot.
The challenges of adapting our transport system to leisure travel are complex. First and foremost is the matter of capacity and infrastructure. Peak leisure travel does not happen at the same times or in the same patterns as traditional commuting. It is unpredictable, often weather-dependent, and highly sensitive to events and holidays. Our systems just are not designed for it.
Rail timetables, for example, are still largely structured around the assumption of weekday commuting, despite evidence that Sunday rail usage is consistently high and indeed growing. Services to popular destinations, such as seaside towns, city centres and countryside hubs, are often infrequent, overcrowded, and unreliable. The same is true of bus services in many rural and semi-rural areas. Park-and-ride facilities that are well-used Monday to Friday often lie half-empty on weekends, while roads to coastal resorts or shopping outlets experience severe congestion.
The emerging Universal Studios development offers a fascinating case study in this regard. The site was reportedly selected, in part, because of its proximity to London and existing rail connections, meaning over 50% of the UK population could potentially reach it within two hours. But can the transport system cope with the tens of thousands of visitors this kind of attraction will generate each day, especially at weekends or during school holidays? Without prejudice to the planning system, the early indications appear to suggest that significant upgrades will be needed, not just to road infrastructure but to public transport, active travel connections, and real-time travel information systems.
There is a deeper question about equity and inclusion. Leisure travel is not just a matter of enjoyment or recreation, it is about access to wellbeing, social connection, and cultural participation. People in lower-income areas, without access to a car, or living in poorly connected rural communities are often excluded from the full range of leisure opportunities. That’s not just a transport issue; in my opinion it is a social justice issue.
When major leisure developments are approved, the assumption is often that visitors will drive. But not everyone can. And increasingly, not everyone wants to. Families without a car face complex and expensive multi-leg journeys to reach attractions that were designed with ample parking but no direct public transport. Teenagers reliant on infrequent buses are cut off from museums, parks, and sports facilities. Older adults who can no longer drive find their worlds shrinking.
In my opinion, transport planning should put equity at its heart and treat access to leisure as a basic right – not a luxury. That may mean improving public transport frequencies at weekends and holidays and thought needs to be given to planning walking, wheeling and cycling routes that connect residential areas to leisure destinations. It means thinking beyond the city centre and the work commute to consider how people experience their local area – where they shop, where they play, where they relax.
Another reason to take leisure seriously is its relationship to peak demand. While the traditional weekday peaks have flattened, leisure travel has created new, unpredictable spikes in usage. These are often harder to manage. Unlike commuters, leisure travellers tend to travel in family groups, carry luggage, require more space and facilities, and have less tolerance for delay or poor service.
This poses operational challenges for transport providers. The types of services required, the nature of the infrastructure needed, and the expectations of passengers are all different. A commuter might put up with standing on a 7:42 to King’s Cross. A family heading to a theme park will not, and their perception of public transport will be shaped by that experience for years.
Moreover, leisure travel is not just about one-off trips to theme parks or beaches. It includes everyday activities like shopping, visiting family, attending sports matches, or exploring local culture. These are the trips that shape our sense of place and community. Yet our current planning frameworks rarely give them much attention.
But it is not all challenges. There’s a real opportunity here to rethink transport in exciting ways. For one, leisure travel can be a fertile ground for behavioural change. People are more willing to try a new mode – like cycling or taking the bus, for a leisure trip than for the work commute. This makes leisure a great entry point for modal shift and for introducing innovations in transport services.
There are many successful examples of this. Seasonal bus services to beauty spots, bike hire schemes at country parks, and temporary pedestrianisation of high streets for events all show how we can experiment and adapt. These kinds of interventions could be scaled up and lessons shared across the industry.
Universal Studios could become a flagship example – not just in entertainment, but in transport innovation. If it is planned right, it could offer high-quality rail access, integrated bus shuttles, safe cycling routes, and active partnerships with local communities. It could be a catalyst for new thinking about how we move people for pleasure.
However, a major barrier to better leisure travel planning is data. Much of our modelling is built on origin-destination pairs geared toward commuting. Leisure travel is more diffuse, more varied, and more complex to track. But if we want to serve it well, we need to understand it.
That means investing in better survey data, real-time analytics, and new modelling techniques that incorporate non-work travel. It also means listening to people, including understanding how families, young people, older adults, and disabled travellers plan and experience leisure trips. Qualitative insight is just as important as quantitative data.
Forecasting tools that can model the impact of a new country park, a shopping centre extension, or a revived town centre market are required. This is where AI should come in, as we need impact assessments that consider weekend footfall, school holiday surges, and overnight stays. And we need funding models that recognise the value of investing in services that support leisure.
If you step back and look at the broader picture, a clear message emerges: our transport system is still designed around a version of society that no longer exists. We have entered an age where work is flexible, cities are polycentric, and experiences matter more than ever. Yet our planning assumptions are stuck in a pre-pandemic, productivity-first mindset.
Leisure is not a niche. It is a central part of life and increasingly, a central part of our transport networks. As transport professionals, we need to stop treating it as an afterthought. We need to stop assuming that leisure travel is ‘discretionary’ and therefore unworthy of serious investment. We need to recognise that in many communities, leisure travel is the primary reason people leave the house at all.
Leisure travel isn’t just here to stay; it is already reshaping the patterns, pressures, and possibilities of our transport networks. Yet we continue to treat it like a second-class citizen in our models and strategies. Our frameworks remain built around the predictable rhythms of the 9-to-5 commuter, even as society drifts further from that paradigm. We plan for business parks more than country parks. We forecast Monday mornings more than Saturday afternoons. We deliver infrastructure for productivity, but forget joy, rest, exploration, and community.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth that I want you all to consider: by neglecting leisure, we may be designing a transport system that quietly deepens inequality, excludes whole groups from full participation in society, and fails to respond to what people actually need and value. We talk about net zero, mode shift, and inclusive growth, but are we truly aligning our investments with how people live their lives now?
So, here’s the question I want to leave you with – if leisure is now the primary driver of movement in our networks, why is it still the afterthought in our planning?
Until we have a good answer, we are not really planning for our collective future. We really are just preserving the past.
Tim Bellamy is Assistant Director – Transport at Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority
Tim originally published this article on LinkedIn on 22nd April 2025
Feature Image: Author sourced