That is a formidable challenge, given the perversity and irrationality of some minds. There are still a few people in denial over climate change, and studies by the Dutch Transport Research Centre (AVV) even observed a negative impact of environmental and economic information that had been designed to encourage pro-environmental travel behaviour. This is the consequence of cognitive dissonance: the car driver, confronted with the knowledge that their actions damage the environment, remains unwilling to change their behaviour and reacts by changing their attitude to dispel the dissonance.
Clearly there is a tipping point at which individual awareness leads to action, and that tipping point will be very different for supporters of the Campaign for Better Transport and for the Association of British Drivers.
Pro-socials and pro-selfs
But what are the determinants for the uncommitted? Behaviourists distinguish between pro-socials who take into account the consequences both for themselves and for society, and pro-selfs who do not. However, for the wider concerns of pro-socials to be maintained, they have to believe that at least a sufficiently large proportion has the same concern for society as they have. Pro-selfs are not affected in the same way - they may even increase their rate of defection, requiring a more dirigiste approach to change their habits.
Those tipping points are likely to fall somewhere on the Nuffield Ladder of Intervention:
- Do nothing
- Provide information
- Enable choice
- Guide choice by changing the default policy
- Guide choice by incentive
- Guide choice by disincentives
- Restrict choice
- Eliminate choice
Consensus on sustainable transport goals can be more fragile. As the first cycle superhighways are being built in London, a minister for roads in New South Wales is busy ripping out a major Sydney cycleway and prioritising cars over active travel, to the fury and dismay of those who recognise its value.
Equally, Boris Johnson’s dismantling of London’s outer congestion charge zone illustrates the difficulty of maintaining progressive measures when a politician places his career before the common good. Today London is Europe’s most congested city, constantly breaching air quality limits. The quest for sustainable travel is never going to be an easy linear progression.
Unsurprisingly, there is greater support for ‘pull’ than ‘push’ measures. In each of the three Sustainable Travel demonstration towns of the 2000s (Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester), people thought that improving facilities for walking, cycling and public transport would be more effective than restricting car use or parking. In the end, there was near unanimous support (between 85% and 94%) for transport policies that support walking, cycling and public transport even if these disadvantage the private car. These attitudes are similar to those held across the UK and the European Union, according to comparable research conducted in the early 1990s.
Among the key lessons learned from such projects are:
- Smarter Choice Programmes are staff-intensive and take planning.
- It is vital to engage with elected members.
- It is valuable to engage with partners.
- Reluctance to implement complementary measures to ‘lock in’ traffic reduction, by preventing development of induced journeys encouraged by better flowing traffic.
- Strong brand needed.
- Wide distribution of information and publicity.
- Innovative campaigns to celebrate sustainable travel.
- Synergies from a broad programme.
- Big wins in car miles/traffic reduction from reducing journeys to work.
- Interventions work best when accompanied by quality improvements (think of Chris Green’s transformation of Network SouthEast).
- High value for money.
Lack of experience with public transport is a considerable barrier to changes in the mobility-mix, which begs the question: should use of public transport and the benefits of active travel be part of school education, accompanied by special offers from transport providers?
We know that active children are healthier, happier and more socially connected than children with a more sedentary lifestyle, but for the rail industry the benefit comes from forming sustainable travel patterns at a young age, which are more likely to be continued into adulthood.
Of course, for many rural journeys, modal choice does not exist. But even accepting that it is impossible to reduce car use everywhere, there are still ways to encourage greater use of sustainable modes in the countryside. At a time of potentially savage cuts to rural bus services, creative alternatives to large buses need to be found.
Answers are likely to be found in the strength of rural and small town communities, drawing on the same spirit that has made Community Rail Partnerships such a success in revitalising rural lines and stations. Community Rail stations could become hubs for minibus or taxibus services, as well as for the bike hire that some provide, especially those stations serving national parks or other tourist attractions. Many already have thriving cafes.
Plymouth has been at the forefront in developing the idea of the taxibus, where local bus services are provided by Hackney carriages. The circular 223 St Budeaux Taxibus operates in the same way as full-sized buses, picking up and setting down at stops along a route according to a timetable. On some sections they operate on a ‘hail and ride’ basis, where customers will be picked up or set down wherever it is safe to do so. Fares are similar to fares charged by other bus operators in the city.
Prospects for rural community buses could be enhanced by expanding the concept of the Swiss PostBus, which carries passengers, mail and parcels to rural areas. Is there scope for adding delivery of groceries or library books?
As Tom Worsley (visiting fellow in transport policy at the Institute for Transport Studies) suggests: “It would make an interesting experiment for a graduate student to take the logistics packages of an online delivery service and the logistics requirements of a given area, and ask: if we wanted to include passenger transport, what could we achieve and how would passengers react to waits while things are dropped off?
“No one likes services made worse, but something is better than nothing. A local authority could invite bids from companies delivering to local areas, to see which might be interested in earning some extra money.’
Kris Beuret, of Social Research Associates, believes that the cohesion of village communities could allow someone to champion a liftshare scheme, which might reduce the need for car ownership among people who use a car for only a few hours a week. It would also obviate the need for those without a car to move.
He adds: “In the 1960s, Cornwall and Devon had a policy of providing bus services to key villages but not others, and suggested people should move to x, y and z. It was seen as a bit Stalinist at the time but I think it may come back. Many are now asking: why would one move at 55 to somewhere where car use was unavoidable? The reason why so many move to the seaside is not just the air, but good rail links.”
Professor Jillian Anable, of the University of Aberdeen, sees the development of autonomous vehicles as heralding major changes in travel behaviour: “The future will not be about owning cars, but accessing them in conjunction with trains, cycling and walking. The difficulty of mixing autonomous vehicles with pedestrians and cyclists means it’s not going to happen in towns, but it could on motorways within 15 years.”
Beuret agrees: “Many people think that the free movement of individual privately owned vehicles is probably time limited now, and some form of road charging - congestion charging - will come in.”
Levels of car use
However, sales of new cars in the UK have risen for 42 consecutive months since early 2012, with a rise of 6.7% in the year to August 2015. One reason suggested has been the very good deals available for new more economical cars, especially by leasing. In contrast, some transport economists are expecting to see a rise in the number of single-car households, through a combination of economic circumstance coupled with the ‘pull’ factors of public transport.
Looking further ahead, public confidence in autonomous vehicles may be hard to win, given the recall of 1.4 million vehicles by Fiat Chrysler because they could be vulnerable to hackers. It would be one thing having your own car locked by hackers demanding a fee for it to be released, but quite another for autonomous vehicles to be hijacked. John Naughton, in The Guardian, argued cogently that the “notion that mass use of the self-driving car could become a practical reality in the foreseeable seems like the purest hogwash”.
More immediate are such questions as whether young urban professionals will revert to parental levels of car use as they grow older? How might the principles of the Smarter Choice programmes in the three towns be applied to medium- and longer-distance journeys? The DfT has never tried to change inter-urban travel behaviour.
There is an unassailable case for government to influence travel behaviour so that all future increases in transport demand are by less damaging modes. Road investment simply compounds problems by inducing more traffic, and even the US recognises that it is impossible to build your way out of vehicle congestion, despite its greater scope for sprawling land use.
As a paper by UCL’s Transport Studies Unit summarised: “Overall, the conclusion is that policy makers and transport industries have more scope to influence travel behaviour than they think, but only if transport interventions are consistent with each other, maintained over a lengthy period, and supported by analytical methods and appraisal frameworks that are not yet commonplace.”
Read the peer reviews for this feature.
Download the graphs for this feature.
