NSO Releases Findings of India's First National Household Travel Survey

9 October 2026National

The National Statistics Office under MoSPI released in October 2026 the findings of India's first National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), built to inform urban-mobility and transport planning. It finds 66.4% of students aged 6 and above travel more than 1 km daily to their educational institution (65.6% rural, 68.1% urban), with walking at 37.0%, buses 29.5% and bicycles 15.8% as the main modes. Among workers, 42.6% use two-wheelers to reach a fixed workplace (37.1% rural, 52.3% urban), and the average monthly commute cost is Rs 785 per worker — Rs 1,044 urban and Rs 612 rural. It lands alongside MoSPI's new environmental accounts strategy.

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The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation was formed in 1999 by merging the Department of Statistics and the Department of Programme Implementation | The National Statistics Office conducts the Periodic Labour Force Survey, the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey and compiles GDP and the Index of Industrial Production | The National Sample Survey was set up in 1950 on the initiative of P. C. Mahalanobis, regarded as the father of Indian statistics

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