What is travel distance?
Travel distance is how far someone has to walk from anywhere in a building to reach a protected escape route or a final exit. It is measured along the route people would actually take, not in a straight line.
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<img src="https://fireoptix.co.uk/glossary/travel-distance/diagram.svg" alt="travel distance — diagram from FireOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://fireoptix.co.uk/glossary/travel-distance">What is travel distance?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://fireoptix.co.uk">FireOptix</a>
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</figure>It exists to limit how long someone is exposed to a developing fire before reaching relative safety. That is why it is measured around furniture and partitions rather than across them.
Permitted distances depend on the use of the building, the risk, and whether escape is possible in more than one direction. A dead end, where people can only go one way, is treated far more strictly than a space with alternative routes.
It is decided at design and then quietly changed by occupation. New partitions, a reconfigured office or a stored pallet can add distance or turn a two-direction space into a dead end without anyone recalculating anything.
In practice
An open-plan floor reconfigured into cellular offices.
The furniture plan changed, a corridor was created, and the route from the far corner to a protected stairway is now considerably longer than the original design assumed.
What is acceptable depends on the building, its occupancy and the guidance it was designed to, and a reconfiguration changes the input to that judgement.
The alteration was signed off as a fit-out rather than as a change to the fire strategy.
What goes wrong in practice
- Measured on a drawing rather than walked, missing the furniture that is actually in the way.
- A layout change creating a dead end that nobody assessed.
- Distances taken from a general figure rather than from the guidance for this building's use.